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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23582320">sarcasm squad gets a summer home</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/floweryfran/pseuds/floweryfran'>floweryfran</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Black Widow (Comics), Iron Man (Movies), Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies), Spider-Man - All Media Types, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Aftermath of Torture, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Anxiety Disorder, BAMF Natasha Romanov, Bisexual Peter Parker, Bucky Barnes &amp; Natasha Romanov Friendship, Bucky Barnes &amp; Sam Wilson Friendship, Bucky Barnes Feels, Bucky Barnes Has Nightmares, Bucky Barnes Has PTSD, Bucky Barnes Is a Good Bro, Bucky Barnes and the 21st Century, Captain America Sam Wilson, Hurt Peter Parker, Iron dad and Spider son, IronDad and SpiderSon, Irondad, Jewish Bucky Barnes, Kidnapped Peter Parker, Kidnapping, Natasha Romanov Feels, Natasha Romanov Has Issues, Natasha Romanov Is a Good Bro, Natasha Romanov Needs a Hug, Not Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Compliant, Peter Parker Gets a Hug, Peter Parker Has Issues, Peter Parker Has Nightmares, Peter Parker Has Panic Attacks, Peter Parker Has a Family, Peter Parker Needs a Hug, Peter Parker Whump, Peter Parker has PTSD, PeterMJ - Freeform, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Protective Natasha Romanov, Protective Peter Parker, Sam Wilson Feels, Sam Wilson Is a Good Bro, Sam Wilson is a Gift, Sam Wilson is a Saint, Spideychelle, Tony Stark Acting as Peter Parker's Parental Figure, Underage Drinking, Young Avengers mentioned, but no one cares about it, he's almost 21 anyway, irondad and spider-son, loose descriptions of torture, mentions of gwen stefani, so many pancakes, which needs a tw</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-04-10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-05-03</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-02 22:22:56</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>41,041</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23582320</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/floweryfran/pseuds/floweryfran</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Peter rolls his head up, eternally pitiful, puke on his chin, tear tracks staining his cheeks, and sees a handful of shadows flying into the room like they’d been summoned by Doctor Facilier. Black things, evil things, the air chills and stiffens like vertebrae aligning and Peter begins to shake. Bucky and Natasha are there, blank-eyed and hand-cuffed, hair standing frizzy, on-end in the way Peter knows means electrocution. A blur-faced guard frog-marches each of them through the door, pauses before they are brought to their own tables, which stand in waiting across from Peter and Sam. The vague light through the door shows Peter Natasha’s lip is split, Bucky’s flesh arm is hanging crooked, and behind them—</p><p>Behind them stands Quentin Beck, a little gaunter, a little scruffier, but so very much alive that Peter is hyperventilating already.</p><p>“Hey, Petey! My old friend,” Beck says. His smile is like glass edges blown red over a fire. “It’s been a while, kiddo. Good thing I’m all ready to make up for lost time, huh?”</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>James "Bucky" Barnes &amp; Peter Parker, James "Bucky" Barnes &amp; Sam Wilson, James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers (background), Michelle Jones/Peter Parker, Peter Parker &amp; May Parker, Peter Parker &amp; Natasha Romanov, Peter Parker &amp; Sam Wilson, Peter Parker &amp; Tony Stark, i cant believe peter n may have less cameo, sam wilson &amp; his thighs, than sam n his THIGHS</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>303</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>496</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>god tier peter parker fics</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. prologue (that sounds ominous)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>muahaha welcome to the wip i've been alluding to for weeks &gt;:-)</p><p>updates will be fridays (i hope - i have up through chapter 5 finished and ready to go) and tags will be updated as we progress!</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>When Tony Stark and Steve Rogers retire after the final battle with Thanos, the remaining Avengers get thrown into the thick of things like never before. </p><p> </p><p>Thor and Valkyrie handle New Asgard and occasionally tread off-world for adventures in sword-swinging and binge-drinking, but Quill’s band of merry misfits tends to have the universe on fairly tight lock. Professor Hulk has fully given up smashing and now spends most of his time in a lab upsized to suit his clumsy hands. Barton returns to Bed-Stuy with his dog and HGTV reruns. </p><p> </p><p>Sam takes up the spangled mantle like a champ, claiming Barnes as his sidekick, while Barnes decks himself in a navy blue peacoat and black tac pants like the ones he wears in the history books, shears his hair short, and says Sam works for him now. It’s like dumb and dumber, but with way more guns. And also wings. Natasha, who had already been training Peter since his sixteenth birthday and has become something of an annoying older sister to him, picks up their training right where they had left off with fervor suitable for the carnation-shaped fireworks on the fourth of July. </p><p> </p><p>And suddenly, the four of them are sort of fronting the Avengers, the ones who are still active, and it’s sort of weird but also cool because these three weird, old people have Peter’s back, like, all the time, and they’re going on legit missions in places like Oradea and Trujillo and Mutare and Peter’s passport looks like the covers of the laptops of his college classmates, stamped end to end with colorful reliefs of towers and flags and maps. </p><p> </p><p>They take down human traffickers and the scummy remnants of Hydra. Sometimes Peter sticks to the city, and somehow manages to compile his very own squad of villains to take down. (Every time he calls them <em> supervillains, </em> he is corrected. Natasha says they are not super. They are lame. Peter thinks they’re lame too, but he sorta wants the edge of badassery calling them <em> supervillains </em> would give him. His very own supervillains!! So cool. Ned is understandably thrilled.) </p><p> </p><p>He makes friends with the Fantastic Four—although mostly Johnny, who he fosters a weird semi-crush upon, mostly because of his cool earring but also because he’s really sweet and endearingly stupid and Peter’s type tends to be split pretty evenly on the bisexual scale of <em> women who can and will kill him </em> and <em> men who might actually be the human embodiment of the Christmas spirit waltzing jollily around at all times of year. </em> Sue is super cool, too—all of them are, really, and Peter maybe sucks up to Reed Richards a lot and maybe it makes Tony jealous but Peter thinks it’s really, really fine because it’s <em> Reed Richards, </em> it’s the human version of Gumby, it’s Elastigirl, and that’s pretty awesome. Iron Man is <em> still cool, Tony, I promise, still cool, but Mister Fantastic? Come on. Come on. </em></p><p> </p><p>Peter hangs out at Tony’s lake house a lot when he isn’t busy kicking ass and pretty much adopts Morgan as his hero understudy, whirling around the expansive grounds with her tucked under his arm like a football the way Ben had once done for him, taking her swimming and riding their bikes and feeding Tony’s alpaca. Morgan teaches him how to finger paint and make gluten free cupcakes. Peter thinks she’s the bee's knees.</p><p> </p><p>Peter watches May and Happy flirt and get together and he still can’t wrap his head around it but he’s always liked Happy and he wants May to be just overjoyed, he wants May to feel happiness so powerful that she can never hide it, one hundred percent of the time. So he’s working on the head-wrapping.</p><p> </p><p>Everything is going good. Peter is at ESU, still dating MJ, alive at age twenty—will wonders never cease?—and passing his classes. (Not acing, but passing, and that’s still pretty good if you ask him.) He’s found a <em> great </em> Mexican place that gives Spidey and the Torch free tacos every time they take pictures with the owner’s <em> nieta. </em> He takes the occasional selfie for the <em> Bugle </em> and J.J.J. might hate him forever but at least he’s making some pocket money.</p><p> </p><p>Peter is happy as a clam. </p><p> </p><p>It can’t last, of course. That would be far too generous of the universe. </p><p> </p><p>“Widow,” Peter hisses. “Status, please and thank you.”</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> “In a bit of a tussle with a guy who looks like—urgh, an anemic Gilbert Blythe.” </em>
</p><p> </p><p>“Let me know if he tugs your pigtails and I’ll deck him.” They're taking down a section of what seems to be a crime syndicate upstate. A bunch of weird radio waves were coming off of their lab building, and this was really just meant to be a precursory investigation, but they mucked that up pretty spectacularly. Peter webs his current pursuer to the wall, lands a sick double-forward-flip, and starts pattering down the hallway, following the green path illuminated on his HUD, until he hears Sam say, <em> “Oh, fuck,” </em> over the comms and the entire building rattles like it’s doing the electric slide.</p><p> </p><p>“What fuck?” Peter says. “What, what fuck, Samuel?” Karen brings up a map of the building and highlights approximately seventy percent of it in bright, nauseating red.</p><p> </p><p><em> “It’s the chucklefuck circus ‘round these parts,” </em> Bucky drawls.</p><p> </p><p><em> “Bomb, lower right quadrant,” </em> Natasha says. <em> “Looks like we’ve got two minutes, max.” </em></p><p> </p><p><em> “These boots were made for walking,” </em> Bucky sings. Peter eyes their little icons on the map on his screen and they’re all getting the hell out of dodge. Peter joins in, shooting a web at the stone ceiling and swinging with all he’s got. </p><p> </p><p>A second explosion rocks them. <em> “Push me, and then just touch me, until I get my,” </em> Bucky sings.</p><p> </p><p><em> “Satisfaction,” </em> Peter, Nat, and Sam finish. </p><p> </p><p><em> “Time before complete structural collapse has shortened to fifteen seconds,” </em> Karen says.</p><p> </p><p>“Oh shit,” Peter says. </p><p> </p><p><em> “I’m not getting out in time.” </em> That’s Sam.</p><p> </p><p><em> “Me neither,” </em> Bucky grunts. </p><p> </p><p><em> “I will, because I am brilliant,” </em> says Natasha.</p><p> </p><p>Peter sighs and begins shooting his stickiest web combination at the ceiling. If he can’t get out, he might as well try and limit the damage to his person.</p><p> </p><p>But the building still falls, webs or not, and Peter finds himself blacked out before his knees even hit the rock below him.</p><p> </p><p>➴➵➶➴➵➶➴➵➶➴➵➶➴➵➶</p><p> </p><p>When Peter awakens, he’s strapped to a table.</p><p> </p><p>Not the first time this has happened, probably won’t be the last either, but that doesn’t mean he’s particularly thrilled about it.</p><p> </p><p>On instinct, he strains against his bonds, and finds he can’t break them. Vibranium, then. A disappointment. Also a hint at what he’s dealing with here: not idiots. Shit. It’s always easier when they’re idiots.</p><p> </p><p>His eyelids feel terribly heavy, and an unwavering thud pounds jackhammer-like behind his eyes. Even without moving to spur it, his stomach rolls, ocean waves and earthquakes, and he’s swallowing compulsively against the bile that stings in his throat, sour and sharp.</p><p> </p><p>Peter lists his head leftward and spits half-heartedly. </p><p> </p><p>“Miss me with that shit,” comes a voice.</p><p> </p><p>“Oh, Christ, <em> Sam,” </em> Peter says, forcing his eyes open. The whole room is pitch dark, but he can tell by the echo of the creepy water dripping that it’s concrete, tip to toe. Like something straight out of a cheesy action movie. They must not be in the lab building anymore.</p><p> </p><p>Peter spends a moment unbearably relieved that he is not alone, and the following moment feeling bad for thinking that.</p><p> </p><p>“Me,” Sam agrees. “You’ve been in dreamland for a while, there, arachni-kid.”</p><p> </p><p>“I feel… assed.”</p><p> </p><p>“You are assed. You got your ass cut off with a machete, put on a plate, and spoon-fed to you. Fuckin’ criminals, man.”</p><p> </p><p>“Yeah,” Peter says weakly. “Fuckin’ criminals.” He smacks his tongue. “Do you know how long we’ve been here? Like, total?” His heart throbs. “Also, where are Nat and Bucky?”</p><p> </p><p>A soft rustle, like Sam is shuffling. Peter can practically see him in his mind: pinned down like him, facing the ceiling, head lolling. “I woke up about an hour ago, I would guess, but the Soviet… Sluts were probably taken half an hour ago, if my calculations are correct.”</p><p> </p><p>“Don’t slut shame them,” says Peter. “They’re more like Soviet Stuffed Animals.”</p><p> </p><p>“I never said being a slut is bad.”</p><p> </p><p>“You implied it. As if you’re not sluttier than both of them. I’ve seen your Instagram story. Thirst traps every other day.”</p><p> </p><p>“Can we focus,” Sam says.</p><p> </p><p>“Yeah,” Peter says, “well, maybe. It’s just that my head is still spinning and I think I’m gonna puke.”</p><p> </p><p>“Point it to the right of you, then. I wore my clean tac suit on this mission ‘cuz I thought it’d be easy. Ain’t nothin’ ever end easy with you assholes.”</p><p> </p><p>Peter retches. It sorta drips on his shoulder a little and before he knows it he’s crying. “I hate bein’ kidnapped,” he sniffles. “I hate puking and I hate concussions and I want Mister Stark. I want Nat and Bucky to break us outta’ here.”</p><p> </p><p>“Aw, shit, kid,” Sam says. “Let it out. This is fuckin’ scary, I’m—fuckin’ scared too. Will a sing-along make you feel better? What was stuck in your head this morning? That I hollered at you for singing on the Quinjet?”</p><p> </p><p><em> “I remember when rock was young,” </em> Peter warbles. </p><p> </p><p>“Oh, shit, Sir Elton!” Sam says. He sings in a dramatic, exaggerated baritone, <em> “Me and Suzie had so much fun.” </em></p><p> </p><p><em> “Holding hands and skipping stones,” </em> they continue together, and maybe Peter does feel a bit heartened for a moment. </p><p> </p><p>Then a distant echo starts approaching. From the hallway. Boots on concrete. </p><p> </p><p>Peter says, “Wait, shh, I— I hear footsteps,” and tries to pull himself together. He snuffles. The mucus dripping into his throat makes a rather tragic and miserable snurgling noise. He wipes his nose on the shoulder that doesn’t have puke smeared on it.</p><p> </p><p>A pair of doors open and Peter places them on the map he’s building in his mind. Four heartbeats, and he recognizes Nat’s and Bucky’s right away, even if they’re both going too fast. The stench of blood and bile and maybe a little bit of piss wafts over and Peter gags. Four pairs of footsteps, two dragging. And then a fifth heartbeat, and Peter is puking again, because he knows this one. He <em> knows </em> this one because he hears it in his fucking nightmares, he’ll never get it out of his head, the fucking laugh, the look in his eyes, demented, no one will ever fucking compare to what this bastard did to him.</p><p> </p><p>Peter rolls his head up, eternally pitiful, puke on his chin, tear tracks staining his cheeks, and sees a handful of shadows flying into the room like they’d been summoned by Doctor Facilier. Black things, evil things, the air chills and stiffens like vertebrae aligning and Peter begins to shake. Bucky and Natasha are there, blank-eyed and hand-cuffed, hair standing frizzy, on-end in the way Peter knows means electrocution. A blur-faced guard frog-marches each of them through the door, pauses before they are brought to their own tables, which stand in waiting across from Peter and Sam. The vague light through the door shows Peter Natasha’s lip is split, Bucky’s flesh arm is hanging crooked, and behind them—</p><p> </p><p>Behind them stands Quentin Beck, a little gaunter, a little scruffier, but so very much alive that Peter is hyperventilating already.</p><p> </p><p>“Hey, Petey! My old friend,” Beck says. His smile is like glass edges blown red over a fire. “It’s been a while, kiddo. Good thing I’m all ready to make up for lost time, huh?”</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. the sweet escape, by gwen stefani</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>When Bucky isn’t sleeping, he’s singing. When Sam isn’t crying, he’s working his jaw like he’s chewing his tongue clean off. Natasha stares slack-jawed and open-eyed at all hours, greasy hair hanging limp in her eyes. </p><p>Peter is a vague imprint of what he was.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>I CAVED EARLY UPDATE</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>So the crime syndicate is not a crime syndicate after all. Just a cover for whatever Beck’s newest plot is, like he’s some stupid serial villain in a never-ending stream of comic-book resurrections. Peter doesn’t know what he expected, but it was not this.</p><p> </p><p>➴➵➶➴➵➶➴➵➶➴➵➶➴➵➶</p><p> </p><p>Peter does not know how long he has been away from the room with the tables and his friends, but he’s been in a new table room for a good long while now and has not enjoyed a single second of it, at all.</p><p> </p><p>The room is enormous and bright white from floor to ceiling with clean creases between the tiles and a general sterile nature that triggers Peter’s gag reflex. It smells of antiseptic and metal but there’s a lingering mustiness that they can’t hose away. He and everyone else have had their suits and gear confiscated in favor of medical scrubs, teal and too-big on all of them—even Bucky, and Peter thinks it’s impressive they managed to <em> find </em> scrubs too big for him.</p><p> </p><p>Peter was alone for a while, then he wasn’t. That was when they started hitting him. He asked why and they said <em> just because. </em> Beck wasn’t even there. Just his lackies. Peter isn’t high enough on Beck’s priority list yet, maybe. (Peter will cling to that naive belief. He knows it’s because Beck is preparing something. Beck is always preparing something behind the cover of the curtain.)</p><p> </p><p>When Beck does finally come, Peter’s tailbone and the back of his skull ache fiercely from pressing into the metal, he’s fairly sure he’s re-concussed, and the hunger pain in his stomach is bordering on excruciating. Beck presses buttons upon the armrest to Peter’s left and the table begins to shift, to straighten him upright, and he can’t help the way his head lolls from the vertigo sweeping his vision. </p><p> </p><p>“Hey, Pete,” says Beck. Peter had forgotten how buoyant he is. “Sorry for the little wait—I had some super special things to prepare just for you.”</p><p> </p><p>By the time Peter is upright, by the time he can lift his head on his neck, he sees it. His heart rate immediately climbs. </p><p> </p><p>A drone like the ones from Europe, but sleeker, more distinct: most definitely not Stark tech. This drone is chrome, with a circumference strip of glowing green, and Peter stares at it like it watches him, like it sees him. </p><p> </p><p>“I’m sure you remember the Binarily Augmented Retro-Framing technology I designed while working for your sugar daddy.”</p><p> </p><p>“BARF, yeah,” Peter says, not rising to the bait, “I remember BARF. I think of you and all I think is BARF.”</p><p> </p><p>“Funny,” Beck says. “Immature, but funny. I wondered if you would’ve changed at all since we last saw each other. I was going to say we should catch up,” Beck is standing just under the drone now, stroking its underbelly like it’s some sort of demented bird, “see what’s been happening in each other’s lives, but I think I’d rather guess.”</p><p> </p><p>Peter’s veins run through with ice.</p><p> </p><p>“You must still be with dear Michelle, of course,” Beck says, and already Peter feels the ice melt into something ferociously hotter. “MJ, that was what you called her, right? Sweet, that. I wonder if she knows what a coward she’s with.”</p><p> </p><p>“I’m not a coward,” says Peter. Of all things to call him that would ring true, a coward is not one. He knows this. He’s proved it. </p><p> </p><p>Beck stares at him, then chortles. “Sure, Pete,” he says, shaking his head like he’s in on some big joke, like <em> you’ll get it when you’re older. </em> He cracks his neck. “And your pal Ned? Heard he’s going to CalTech. That’s a pretty big deal.”</p><p> </p><p>Peter feels his fingers twitch.</p><p> </p><p>“And the lovely Aunt May, I could never forget her,” says Beck, tapping his forehead with the hand that isn’t busy petting the drone. “Like an actress, that woman. Forest Hills, a nice place to live for a single guardian.”</p><p> </p><p>Peter is—</p><p> </p><p>“And what about Stark’s little girl?” says Beck, and Peter is fucking on fire. “Morgan Pietra? They named her after you, that’s pretty fucking sweet. Is she like your sister or something? Playing happy, adopted family with billionaires, Peter?” Beck’s eyes, his eyes. His mouth is split wide, teeth clenched. “With thieves, Peter?” </p><p> </p><p>Peter does not dignify him with an answer. He’d dignify him with a pop to the nose, if he could just get his hands free.</p><p> </p><p>“We can’t have that,” Beck says, flipping some internal switch, and suddenly he’s bouncing as he walks again, letting go of the drone, head cocked to the side, grin on his lips, blissed out, and Peter is reeling, he’s burning, he’s choking.</p><p> </p><p>“What do you want,” Peter says. “Tell me what you want, or tell Tony, or whatever, shit, just stop this.” <em> The idea of you hurting my family is the one thing I can’t take and you know that, </em> Peter doesn’t say.</p><p> </p><p>Beck stops and looks at Peter. He wears pity like eyeliner, and his eyes are smoked at every edge. “Oh, Petey,” he says. “Sweet, naive Petey. You think I want something?” He cocks his head again. “Well,” a dazzling, insane smile, “I do. I do! But nothing material, nothing silly like that.” He begins walking towards Peter ever so slowly, his boots creaking against the concrete, and he stops once he’s close enough to breathe into Peter’s nose, to make his eyes water and his hair stand on end, and he says, “I want Tony Stark to lose his fucking <em> mind </em> worrying about you. I want you to lose <em> your mind </em> worrying about what I’m doing to him while you’re here. Artful, right?” Peter feels a scream rise like bile. “And your little friends in there? They can worry about <em> their </em> families—don’t look so shocked, Petey, you offend! I tracked them all, of course, even the ones hiding in secure SHIELD facilities—yes, even ancient Chava Barnes, named for the first woman but last born of four siblings, the last Barnes still really alive, what <em> poetic </em> parents she had—and poor Grandma Wilson with her dentures and her ratty bathrobe—”</p><p> </p><p>Peter doesn’t know why he bothers, but his knee jerks up on impulse, in the perfect position to smash Beck’s balls into roadkill. It’s just that he’s tied down. So when his leg shoots up, his foot catches in the band grounding him to the bed, and his ankle pops sickeningly, a flash of white pain.</p><p> </p><p>Peter, to his credit, does not make a sound.</p><p> </p><p>Beck’s eyes, if possible, light up further. “Oh, Peter! I didn’t know you were so eager to start the fun. In that case…” Beck crosses the room and Peter follows him with wet eyes, now able to map the place out as Beck’s footsteps echo off a second table, some sort of glass structure like a shower, a metal cube like a cage, a set of pulleys. A cart with medical supplies that Beck wheels over, whistling something cheery, before he grabs Peter’s arm and wrenches the sleeve of his cheap scrubs out of the way, tearing the fabric, and Peter writhes, pulls with all he’s got in him, but the bonds do not break, and Beck pins his arm and sticks him with a needle. As Peter’s eyes burn and his veins begin to ache, Beck whispers, “This is a hallucinogen I cooked up just for you, Petey. I’ve got another for your soldier, one for your widow, one for the man who thinks he can fly. I’ve got them for all of you.” Beck grins, savoring. “Now, my Augmented Retro-Framing tech is going to show you a little something—some film I came across, some I made myself, award-worthy, truly—and I’m gonna let that… sink in.”</p><p> </p><p>Peter can’t move. Peter can’t move so much as to twitch the tip of his nose, but he somehow musters the strength to spit a big, fat loogie into Beck’s face before he pulls away, and Peter wants to say <em> Clean the black mold out of this place, asshole, I’ve got an allergy, </em> but then Beck punches him on the jaw and stalks out of the room, the door swinging behind him.</p><p> </p><p>It’s not even a good punch, really, which, for some reason, makes it all the worse.</p><p>Peter feels the table list under him with the sound of the door slamming shut, and he’s sure he’s tumbling, the entire thing spinning like those danger acts on America’s Got Talent where stupid husbands throw knives at their wives who are pinned to enormous, flaming dart boards, and Peter can’t open his eyes, but he sees anyway, a landscape of red dust, a shock of six-toned light, an alley, a gunshot, a plane tumbling down, and he’s too late, he’s always too late, and this is where the nightmare begins.</p><p> </p><p>➴➵➶➴➵➶➴➵➶➴➵➶➴➵➶</p><p> </p><p>Their treat once they’ve finished a round with Beck is a meal. One per day is what they’re promised. Today, Peter is fed alphabet soup by a feckless guard and feels the storm of unspoken letters swirling down his throat, festering in the pit of his stomach. </p><p> </p><p>He swears a spoonful spells <em> help.  </em></p><p> </p><p>➴➵➶➴➵➶➴➵➶➴➵➶➴➵➶</p><p> </p><p>Peter thinks Sam always looks the worst of all of them, after. He’d never gone through something like this before—not like Bucky and Natasha or even like Peter. Usually they get sent in one at a time, but sometimes they go together, and when Sam and Peter are together, Hallucination Peter makes it a point to hold Sam’s hand, even if the Sam Peter sees is just a figment of the simulation, because it makes Peter feel less guilty about the fact that they’ve been in here for three days and they all get their asses kicked so bad each time that they haven’t even been able to find a time they’re all awake in which to plan their escape. </p><p> </p><p>The last time Bucky came back from the room, he didn’t talk for what Natasha said was seven hours, and then started singing all at once. Bucky’s always warbled, larklike, humming while cooking or training or reading, and it seems like he’s clinging to the practice now, to occupy his thoughts, to mute the white noise behind them. Peter doesn’t mind, not really, because he is almost always either unconscious or on the verge of actual death by the time he gets back from Beck’s playroom anyway: he’s either too out of it to hear it or appreciative of the reminder that it’s not just him here.</p><p> </p><p>So now Bucky is singing. Under his breath, flat on his back with his scruffy chin to the ceiling, sweet and soft, a crooner born and bred, he sings <em> “My funny Valentine, sweet, comic Valentine,” </em> and Peter’s ears are ringing and his entire body is trembling, tingling and, oh, no, his eyes have already been leaking tears for indeterminable hours, sore and swollen, and he cannot, he cannot stop it, he feels as if he’s breaking to pieces. </p><p> </p><p><em> “Is your mouth a little weak? When you open it to speak, are you smart?” </em> and now Peter is thinking of MJ, of course he’s thinking of MJ, and he’s seeing her, bloodstained, behind his eyes, seeing her dangling from a strand of his own webbing with her back snapped, seeing her falling, seeing her weeping, seeing her with the mace she carried in Europe smashed into her skull and now Peter is puking down himself again and every noise is a wailing alarm, his ears are ringing, and Sam is saying, “Hey, hey, kid, breathe, what the fuck,” and Natasha snaps, “Shut the fuck up with the singing, Yasha,” and they all fall silent as Peter heaves and his head spins and he grows an unbearable frustration in his chest, in his throat, it aches, and he’s going to scream, to scream, to scream.</p><p> </p><p>Sam starts to breathe steadily, measuredly. Peter has an irreconcilable urge to clock him, but they’re all tied down and he’s reeling so badly he can’t even open his eyes, so he settles for following the breaths, each breath, carefully, and the silence becomes heavier, and the breathing becomes easier, and, as time ticks on, the tight fist around his chest loosens, his vision clears, and he opens his eyes as he croaks, “I’m so fucking sorry.”</p><p> </p><p>Bucky taps his metal fingers on the bed beneath him, clanging gently. He signs with his hands far apart where they should be stacked close, straining his neck so Peter can see his scrunched face, <em> Too much? </em></p><p> </p><p>Peter knows basic ASL, learned it from Natasha during their spider-school training regiment. Knows enough to nod <em> yes, </em> and then say, through his aching throat, stinking of bile, “Sensory overload. Sorry.”</p><p> </p><p>“Not your fault your body is so freaky,” Sam breathes, and Natasha nods. Peter’s eyes bounce between them all, and they look so pale, and he says, “This is the first time we’ve really been together since we got snagged, huh? And I’m… already acting like we’re throwing a frat party. Just, uh. Without the fun, booze part.”</p><p> </p><p>“Ha,” says Sam. “Shut the fuck up and take a nap.”</p><p> </p><p>Peter says, “No, no, we need to, uh, talk. Briefly, quietly.”</p><p> </p><p>“Bucky and I,” says Nat, cutting to the chase. “Most experience. Take the guards down during transport between rooms, or break out during simulation.”</p><p> </p><p>“No,” Peter says, “no, me. Sixth sense. Only I can sense what’s real.”</p><p> </p><p>“My ass,” Sam says too loudly, and Peter’s ears ring for a moment. “Sorry, shit, sorry, kid.”</p><p> </p><p>“Sam’s right,” Bucky breathes, and Peter thinks he looks almost lucid. “Not alone, Pete, no fucking way.”</p><p> </p><p>“You don’t trust me?” Peter says.</p><p> </p><p>“Petya,” Natasha whispers shortly, “your senses are fritzing and you’re not even actively trying to break out of a sim. Imagine what it would feel like with the drugs. With the hallucinations.”</p><p> </p><p>“I can practice,” Peter says stubbornly. “Build up endurance.”</p><p> </p><p>“No chance,” she says. “Barnes and I. That’s final. We break out of the room, set off an alarm. Peter, you’ll need to steal something. Okay? You need to take something from the drone room, something you can rewire at short notice to send a signal to Stark.”</p><p> </p><p>“Okay,” Peter says, slightly mollified. “I’ll need to—I’ll need to break out of the cuffs. After that, should be easy. Scrap parts.”</p><p> </p><p>“Sam, you take out the guards,” says Natasha.</p><p> </p><p>“You’re our man,” says Bucky, “our soldier, our Captain Shmamerica, mazel tov you bitch.”</p><p> </p><p>“Fuck you,” says Sam, but his lips quirk in a smile, and Peter feels okay, he feels solid, he feels better, at least, until the door opens and they take Natasha, alone, and the room seems to lose its spark.</p><p> </p><p>“And then there were three,” Bucky mumbles.</p><p> </p><p>A long moment passes, and then, mournful, low, like singing at the silver moon, <em> “Stay, little Valentine, stay. Each day is Valentine’s day.” </em></p><p> </p><p>➴➵➶➴➵➶➴➵➶➴➵➶➴➵➶</p><p> </p><p>It’s Peter’s turn again. He forgets what he saw last time, but he knows he’s still shaking from it. Knows his brain felt like oatmeal after. Knows that he doesn’t want to go.</p><p> </p><p>Peter steals a glance over his shoulder, sudden and ferocious, clawed panic sending his heart thrumming against his ribs, and, Bucky, with the clearest eyes Peter has seen from him yet, says, “Give ‘em hell, kid.”</p><p> </p><p>Peter sets his jaw and gives one sharp nod before he’s yanked through the door and it shuts behind him with a wall-shaking thump.</p><p> </p><p>➴➵➶➴➵➶➴➵➶➴➵➶➴➵➶</p><p> </p><p>“How are you even alive?” Peter wrangles the wherewithal to ask eventually, ears ringing from the first round of bombing hallucinations Beck just dragged him through.</p><p> </p><p>“Wouldn’t you like to know,” Beck mutters with a smirk, wagging his brows while fiddling with something on the tablet in his hands. </p><p> </p><p>“Yeah, I would,” Peter says. “That’s why I asked, asshole.”</p><p> </p><p>“That’s for me to know and you to never find out,” Beck says, shooting Peter a lip-splitting grin. Something in his eyes is disconnected. They’re not one color. They glow in the dark, feline and glossy and tinged with green. Peter’s skin crawls. “I’ve got something fun for you today, Petey. It’s on its way.”</p><p> </p><p>“Great,” Peter says dryly.</p><p> </p><p>When the doors open, a chair is wheeled in, hulking and wired and fitted with cuffs for his ankles and wrists. Peter’s spidey-sense goes fucking wild, sharp pain shooting up his spine like fireworks, and he winces against it, writhing in his bonds because he needs to get out, now, now, now. </p><p> </p><p>“I’m going to explore how administering electroshocks interacts with your hallucinations!” Beck sings.</p><p> </p><p>Peter struggles against the guards, but his ankle is still broken and he’s trembling from one measly meal per day and he’s slowed by the knowledge that his suit is gone, probably destroyed, so there’s no way his death could be communicated to Tony—Peter’s vitals failing now unable to set off a location tracker that could, at least, lead Tony to the others. </p><p> </p><p>“No,” Peter says, tossing his elbows, kicking, taking every punch that lands upon his jaw, that blackens his eyes, because he knows if he sits in that chair then bad things will happen. “Let fucking go, let go of me!”</p><p> </p><p>“Have <em> so </em> much fun!” Beck calls. He leaves the room. Peter is alone with the guards who finally manage to strap down his limbs, who plant electrodes on his temples, and he’s wheezing and reeling from exertion and mind-whitening fear. The usual needle in his arm, his limbs grow numb and heavy, and then the shocks start.</p><p> </p><p>It’s like nothing Peter has felt before, like fire and flood and the surface of the earth freezing over inside of him. Every bit of skin feels like it’s being carved at with a knife, and his eyes roll back, and he falls into an orange landscape, and he sees it all again.</p><p> </p><p>➴➵➶➴➵➶➴➵➶➴➵➶➴➵➶</p><p> </p><p>“And how was the Drone Zone today?” asks Bucky as Sam is wheeled back inside.</p><p> </p><p>“Blissful, as always,” Sam mumbles. 

Bucky and Natasha are going to try tonight. Peter broke a drone accidentally a few days ago, blew up the whole fucking drone room like a lunatic because he was watching Tony get shot in an alleyway and that was just not, not not not. Peter briefly busted himself off the table, then nearly brained himself with the falling concrete from the caved-in ceiling. He was barely lucid enough to hide some pieces of circuitry and metal shards into his underwear to use later, and they’re still poking around his gooey bags now, but at least he knows he can ask to take a dump and the guard will wait outside the door and he can build the contraption in his brief solitude and use it quick.</p><p> </p><p>Natasha and Bucky are wheeled away. Four minutes later, Peter starts shouting about having to take a shit until someone comes in and lets him. The bathroom is dead dark and not much more than a slow toilet and a dirty sink, but he makes do. He rewires the circuit board, connects it to the radio piece he’d nabbed—the one that picks up signals from Beck’s software and projects what it receives to show Peter the stuff of his nightmares—and sends a series of pings on the frequency he knows the Stark server plays upon. Then he flushes the thing down the toilet.</p><p> </p><p>He washes his hands, thanks G-d there isn’t a mirror in this bathroom, and lets himself be marched back to his room, feeling more relaxed than he has yet.</p><p> </p><p>It all falls to shit.</p><p> </p><p>Bucky breaks out, but Natasha doesn’t. Bucky—strong as he is, brave as he is, capable as he is—can’t do it all alone. </p><p> </p><p>They send Natasha back to Sam and Peter and she looks terrible, like a wax figurine, and Bucky doesn’t come back until three hours after that, unconscious, more pulp than man, and Peter shouts in frustration, helplessness bubbling in his gut.</p><p> </p><p>➴➵➶➴➵➶➴➵➶➴➵➶➴➵➶</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> “Oh, baby, this town rips the bones from your back. It's a death trap, it's a suicide rap.” </em>
</p><p> </p><p>Water drips. Bucky screams.</p><p> </p><p><em> “We gotta get out while we're young,” </em> Sam sings through an audibly thick throat.</p><p> </p><p><em> “'Cause tramps like us,” </em> Peter and Natasha join in, and Bucky cries, and the rest of them sing for him, to block it out, whatever is ringing in his ears, <em> “baby, we were born to run.” </em></p><p> </p><p>➴➵➶➴➵➶➴➵➶➴➵➶➴➵➶</p><p> </p><p>When Bucky isn’t sleeping, he’s singing. When Sam isn’t crying, he’s working his jaw like he’s chewing his tongue clean off. Natasha stares slack-jawed and open-eyed at all hours, greasy hair hanging limp in her eyes. </p><p> </p><p>Peter is a vague imprint of what he was.</p><p> </p><p>➴➵➶➴➵➶➴➵➶➴➵➶➴➵➶</p><p> </p><p>Peter wonders every moment of every day whether they have Tony. He thinks Beck would seem more excited if they did. Would show Peter videos when he is lucid instead of just mind-bogglingly drugged. Would lord it over him more than he is. Now, it’s like an afterthought: <em> Oh, you think this is bad? You should see what I’m doing with Tony Stark right now. </em></p><p> </p><p>He wonders about Morgan and May and MJ and Pepper. About Ned, and Happy, and Steve, and Chava Barnes and Grandma Wilson. </p><p> </p><p>He prays for them all every morning and every night, when he’s lucid enough to remember.</p><p> </p><p>➴➵➶➴➵➶➴➵➶➴➵➶➴➵➶</p><p> </p><p>Peter thinks water-boarding is the worst by far. From asthma to panic attacks to fights where he’s strangled, he’s spent too much of his life unable to breathe. And being locked in the reinforced glass box, drugs heavying him and short spurts of hallucinations pressing him to the walls in terror, wrenching his mouth into screams that drench his lungs, will etch itself onto the repertoire of his nightmares in unforgiving, curly script. </p><p> </p><p>➴➵➶➴➵➶➴➵➶➴➵➶➴➵➶</p><p> </p><p>When the chance comes, Peter seizes it, and he doesn’t let himself think. Not for a second. </p><p> </p><p>He claws his way out of Ben’s hundredth, thousandth, millionth death, this time drowning in a roaring sea, the type Peter had never even been to, and maybe that’s why he knows it’s so, so wrong, and he finds himself screaming, adrenaline pounding through him with painful potency, tearing, free of the cuffs. He’s on the concrete ground, damp, and he knows the door is about to open so he punches out the drone and leaves his hand fisted inside of it, uses it to bludgeon the two guards that come running, drops the pieces and levels the guards outside the room the four of them stay in, the memory of how not much more than a blur. </p><p> </p><p>Peter can’t breathe. He feels like his heart is going to explode.</p><p> </p><p>He wrenches the door open and they’re all there, pale and loose and pained.</p><p> </p><p>“Come on,” he hisses, and he shatters Sam’s bonds, Bucky’s, Natasha’s, and they are staring at him in shock, and then they are running, four pairs of bare fucking feet, careful and cautious and fucking <em> silent, </em> and Sam decks the next guard and Bucky takes one out with the arm and they’re pulling comms out of Beck’s men’s ears, pulling their uniform jackets off without discussing it, disguising themselves, gearing up, a pistol in their pockets. Bucky and Natasha go first, to sweep the floor, and Sam and Peter start hunting for the exit, Peter counting their turns, Sam counting their steps, and they find two more men with two more comms and take them, connect themselves to Bucky and Natasha, take the jackets and slip into them like grimy second skin.</p><p> </p><p>They turn another corner—</p><p> </p><p>And there’s Beck, there’s Beck, but he has no toys, no protection, just a bag of takeout in his hand, and he’s laughing, loudly, he’s fucking laughing. 



Sam levels Beck in seconds.</p><p> </p><p>Snaps his neck and leaves him limp and crooked on the ground.</p><p> </p><p>Peter leans over and pukes and Sam says, “That was too merciful, fucking bastard prick,” and grabs Peter’s hand in his own like in every one of Peter’s hallucinations and they begin to run and it feels uncanny and Peter can’t stop saying, “It’s fake, it’s fake, it’s fake,” so Sam says, “Feel my hand, Peter, does that feel fake? You feel me squeezing you? That’s one-hundred-percent verified American beefcake, remember that. Feel this grody ass floor under your feet. All damp and sticky. Does that feel fake to you? Hell fucking no. We’re going, kid, we’re going.”</p><p> </p><p>They take out four more guards and then Bucky is in their ears, <em> “If I could escape,” </em> he sings, and Sam throws his head back and laughs and says, “Barnes, you watch I don’t kiss you on the fucking lips when we’re out of here.”</p><p> </p><p><em> “I want to get away to our sweet escape,” </em> Natasha warbles, pitchy and terrible. </p><p> </p><p><em> “Woo-hoo,” </em> sings Peter unsurely. </p><p> </p><p><em> “Yee-hoo!” </em> all three answer, and Sam says, “We found the fucking exit, we found the fucking exit,” and Natasha says, “We’re right behind you,” and they <em> are, </em> in their guard jackets and their comms wearing stolen boots with their strange scrubs and carrying two extra unlaced pairs of shoes for Peter and Sam and they step outside together and there is sunlight.</p><p> </p><p>There is <em> sunlight </em> and Peter can’t breathe, they’re all wincing and covering their eyes like a pack of idiot vampires, and Sam is still holding his hand, and Peter forces his eyes open to take a hungry fucking look at them. Sam, still tall and broad but less so, sharper, tense around the eyes. Natasha, not an ounce of curvature lost, not a muscle in atrophy, which likely says more about the procedures she’s endured to look this way than the strain her body was under. Bucky, hunched at the shoulders, blue under his eyelashes, his cheekbone and lip still busted to shit but alive and tilting his head back to soak the sun into his skin. </p><p> </p><p>Peter and Sam pull on their boots. They all drop their comms and stomp on them.</p><p> </p><p>“You know,” Natasha says. “If this were a movie, this is where we’d start dancing uncomfortably to prove that we have escaped the constraints of our situation and are on the path to recovery.”</p><p> </p><p>A silent moment. </p><p> </p><p>Bucky begins to bounce cautiously, swaying his shoulders, then his hips. </p><p> </p><p>That is when the first gunshot rings out.</p><p> </p><p>“Fuck I thought you fucking killed them all what the fuck,” Sam hisses as they all hunch over and run like the fucking wind. They run clumsy like they’ve never used their legs, and they run zig-zag because they’ve done this before, and Bucky is still singing <em> wee-hoo yee-hoo </em> under his breath and Peter is trying to comprehend the amount of color around him.</p><p> </p><p>Peter nearly freezes mid-stride. Sam yanks harder on his arm to get him to keep up. Peter whispers, urgent, “Sam. Sam, we never checked if it’s really them, it could be Beck’s people in disguise, a, uh, more BARF tech. We didn’t, um, ask, we didn’t check—”</p><p> </p><p>Sam says, “Brilliant thinking, kid, but Robocop singing fucking Gwen Stefani is a pretty good giveaway that it’s really fucking him.”</p><p> </p><p>“True,” Peter gasps, “true, true.” He is so winded. He hasn’t been winded in forever. Everything is aching. </p><p> </p><p>They run for what feels like ages, and they never hear another gunshot, and it terrifies them all. They go, and the sun crosses the sky, baking their shoulders, and they go, and they hit a fucking road sign that says Welcome to Cayuga Heights, and Peter says, “Oh my fucking Jesus Christ we are so close to Tony’s cabin.”</p><p> </p><p>They all turn towards him. “Cayuga Heights, New York,” Peter says, thanking his bastard Parker Luck for doing him this one solid. “Tony lives in Ithaca, that’s, like, right here. Guys. <em> Guys.” </em></p><p> </p><p>“Payphone,” Natasha says, and she grabs Bucky by the fingers and grips his forearm with her other hand. “Now, we gotta find one.”</p><p> </p><p>“Calm yourself, Tash, what do you think I am, a fuckin’ payphone bloodhound? Shit.”</p><p> </p><p>“We’ll have a better shot just asking to borrow someone’s cell,” says Sam. Peter can hear Sam’s blood flying through his veins. “Let’s just.” Sam sticks his free hand in the air and yells, “Hey!” at the next car driving by. The car does not slow. “Asshole,” says Sam.</p><p> </p><p>“Civilization,” says Peter, “let’s find civilization, then cell phone. I don’t trust random cars, what the fuck. What if it’s one of them in disguise coming after us.”</p><p> </p><p>The others grumble in assent. They set off.</p><p> </p><p>“It’s the other side of the inlet,” Peter mumbles as they walk, “I know this drive, I know this drive. We’re less than two miles from Collegetown Ithaca and, like, the Commons, and it’s. Guys. It’s right across the fucking inlet.”</p><p> </p><p>“I hear you, Pete,” says Sam, tugging him close. Sam’s arm is still big and warm and strong around Peter’s shoulders, and Peter hasn’t felt like he needs to be protected in a long while now, but this is nice.</p><p> </p><p>They walk. They follow the signs to the Commons—a little downtown open-mall type of place, with little bookstores and restaurants but, most importantly, people. They borrow a cell phone. </p><p> </p><p>Peter has it pressed to his ear as it rings and rings and his heart is thrumming so quickly it’s stumbling over beats, and when it picks up, the voice is short, <em> “You should not be able to call this number, whoever you are.” </em></p><p> </p><p>“Tony,” Peter breathes, and then he’s fucking crying again but he can’t even blame himself, because Tony’s voice is right here and Tony is okay, “Tony, Tony, Tony.”</p><p> </p><p>Tony chokes on the other line. <em> “Oh my G-d, </em> Peter?” he says. <em> “What the fuck, I’m tracing the call right now, I’m coming, buddy, I’m on my way right fucking now I fucking swear on my life, Rhodes! </em> Rhodey, <em> get the fuck in here,” </em> Tony is breathing heavily, Peter can hear the suit assembling, the suit Tony is not supposed to touch, or own, or make, but has anyway because he’s <em> Tony </em> and Peter has never felt so fond of his stupid stubborness. <em> “Is everyone okay? Are you okay? Injuries, anything, Steve! Fucking Steve, it’s, yeah, it’s them, come on, we’re going, grab on,” </em> and Peter hears the click as the call transfers to Tony’s suit audio, <em> “talk to me, kid, just let me hear you.” </em></p><p> </p><p>“Beck doesn’t have you? Or anyone?”</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> “What? No. Why? What did they tell you? We’re all okay, I promise you, every single one of us, even Barton, who I don’t think anyone would care about if he was, um, captured. That was a bad joke, pretend I didn’t say it. We’re all right here. Are you okay? Are you bleeding?” </em>
</p><p> </p><p>“We’re okay,” Peter croaks. “We’re in downtown Ithaca borrowing a very nice lady’s phone and, uh, not, not really hurt, not bad, Bucky’s face is busted but that’s it, we’re okay. Just. Um. Don’t think we, uh. How secure is this line?”</p><p> </p><p><em> “Don’t risk it,” </em> Tony says. </p><p> </p><p>“Did you get my beeps?” Peter asks.</p><p> </p><p><em> “Beeps?” </em> Tony says. <em> “What beeps, buddy?” </em></p><p> </p><p>“I radio pinged you a—um,” Peter shakes his head because he thinks he sees something crawling out of the corner of his eye. It disappears with the motion. “Never mind. Never mind, it clearly didn’t work, so. I’m just glad you’re coming now.”</p><p> </p><p><em> “Me too,” </em> Tony says fervently. <em> “Kid, we’re a minute out, okay? I promise, one fucking minute, maybe less if I really push it, we’re almost there.” </em></p><p> </p><p>“Okay,” Peter says, “okay, okay, I’m gonna hang up and we won’t move, okay?”</p><p> </p><p><em> “Kid,” </em> Tony says. His voice wavers. <em> “Peter. I can’t even explain how good it is to hear your voice.” </em> The call clicks off.</p><p> </p><p>Peter turns back to the woman who gave them the phone and hands it off. “Thank you so much,” he says.</p><p> </p><p>“I just hope you all get picked up by whoever it is you’re looking for,” the woman responds, pocketing it. She gives them a quick once-over. “I guess those Cornell frat parties are just as crazy as they were as when I was in school, huh?” she says.</p><p> </p><p>Sam just about bursts a blood vessel keeping his snort of laughter in. Bucky buries his face in his hands. Peter just says, “Uh, yeah, thanks again,” thinly and turns around so he doesn’t have to face her any longer.</p><p> </p><p>Peter feels a hand on his shoulder and he leaps a foot into the fucking air but it’s just Natasha, with her short fingers and her cold skin and her arms winding around his chest from behind, pressing her face into his shoulder. He puts his hands atop hers where they sit over his belly, and he soaks in the fact that he can touch them all now. </p><p> </p><p>“I’m proud of you,” Peter says, and he sniffs a little. “All of you, go team, we fucking killed that, we destroyed it. Go Varsity.”</p><p> </p><p>Sam kicks him in the shin but joins in the hug and Bucky piles on from behind, planting kisses on each of their temples because some people are huggers but Bucky is a smoocher.</p><p> </p><p>Peter’s heart is still racing, but his blood is all in his body, and they’re all safe, and—yes, yes, he can hear the repulsors coming, and he says, <em>“Geloybt gat,”</em> and Bucky echoes it and Sam and Natasha squeeze.</p><p> </p><p>Iron Man and War Machine and Steve Rogers land in the middle of the Ithaca Commons and come running down the walkway like it’s a g-ddamn tarmac and it probably says a lot about the Ithaca Commons that they don’t get a <em> single </em> look from the handful of pedestrians smoking weed and eating Waffle Frolic. The four of them are scooped up in the biggest group hug Peter has ever been a part of and for a moment it’s okay before he really can’t—he really can’t, um, breathe, um, Sam, did we check if it’s them? Did we check if it’s them?</p><p> </p><p>And the hug breaks because Natasha has spent the entirety of it tense like a cat about to strike and she spits, “Prove it.” The switch is flipped so quickly that Tony and Rhodey and Steve seem boggled, lost three miles downstream. Sam needs to grab Peter’s hand to keep him from yanking on the ends of his hair. Bucky has turned into a statue. </p><p> </p><p>“Prove…?” says Steve.</p><p> </p><p>Rhodey says, “At Peter’s last birthday party I snuck him four Jagerbombs and we never told anyone. Until now.”</p><p> </p><p>Peter wilts slightly. “Dude,” he says.</p><p> </p><p>Tony glances at Rhodey and then back to the four of them. “Um,” he says. “Fuck, okay, uh, Natasha, the first thing I ever saw you do was beat the shit out of Happy Hogan.”</p><p> </p><p>“Anyone could know that,” she says, eyes narrowed. “Something obscure, come on, Stark. Fuck.” Her muscles are so taught that Peter can practically hear her joints creaking.</p><p> </p><p>“Fuck,” repeats Tony, fumbling, eyes wide, and Peter thinks this proves it’s Tony more than any question could, and Tony says, “On the night Prince died, Nat and I drank a whole bottle of purple liquor and baked a purple cake in his honor.”</p><p> </p><p>Everyone looks at her. She nods tersely. </p><p> </p><p>Steve freezes for a moment before he gets this bastard smirk on his face. “Sam owns a pair of Captain America underwear with the shield on the front, right where the dong goes, like a bullseye,” he says smugly. “And they’re <em> briefs.” </em></p><p> </p><p>“Hey, fuck you, Captain I-Go-Commando. Who said this was roast your tortured friends day?” Sam says.</p><p> </p><p>The spell breaks. That word is enough to send meteors careening towards the surface of the earth like kisses. Peter doesn’t know if he should tense up or let himself relax into the surety of it.</p><p> </p><p>Peter, instead, searches for Tony’s face. “Tony,” he whispers. </p><p> </p><p>Tony always knows what Peter needs. He’s out of the suit and has his arms around Peter in a second, in a fraction of one, and Peter’s knees are quaking but Tony is taking his weight, his metal arm tight around Peter’s back and his flesh hand on the nape of Peter’s neck, brushing his greasy curls. As Peter watches Rhodey embrace Natasha, and Sam, Bucky, and Steve do some weird three-way bro-hug while Steve presses kiss after kiss atop Bucky’s head, Tony whispers, “I’ve got you, Chipmunk,” and the resurrected nickname from Peter’s baby-face days nearly sets him off crying again, because this is his Tony, right down to his very atoms he can <em> feel </em> it, he can smell it in the machine grease and expensive hazelnut coffee clinging to his skin, he knows it in the grooves of Tony’s weathered muscles, the scruff of his chin.</p><p> </p><p>Tony says, “You’re safe. You’re home,” and Peter scrunches his eyes shut and lets himself believe it.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>geloybt gat - thank g-d</p><p>chapter two all cooked up, steaming and on the plate, from my kitchen to urs! i finished this way ahead of schedule! like, the whole thing! she's done! we'll see how long i tease you between chapters being posted! i have a strong impulse to post them all right now! but i also want to keep the audience engaged and interested *wags eyebrows* soooo we shall see how merciful i am muahahahahaha &gt;:-)</p><p>please do leave your thoughts and such because i love hearing what people think and i ESPECIALLY need human interaction in these trying times LMAO</p><p>&lt;333 i love u all, each and every one</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. tony gets an idea and, for once, people agree with him</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Tony takes a breath. “Hill and SHIELD and I want you and the other four to take the summer off. The whole summer, completely retired, to recuperate.”</p><p>Peter feels his jaw drop. A terrible wave of emotion wallops him in his stomach, the polar opposite of it smacking him across the cheek. </p><p>“I offered to build you guys a little vacation home,” Tony says quietly. “SHIELD approved. May approved. Natasha approved already, too, actually. She wants to help design it because she’s a control freak masking her control issues as a sudden penchant for interior design.” Tony rubs the bridge of his nose. “It’ll be the four of you. Just the four of you, and you’ll be right here in Ithaca, by me. On the other side of downtown, not too close, so I won’t be, y’know, sitting on your eggs or whatever, but— yeah. You’ll all go to mandated therapy sessions, we’ll see if you need meds and get you on a dosage that works, and you’ll all recuperate together, because being alone would be garbage, but you also won’t be in a pristine, like, hospital facility somewhere, because none of you would like that. Especially now. After.”</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>They had been gone just shy of two weeks, Tony tells them on the flight home. Peter files this information, and then immediately destroys it. It hurts to think about.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The cabin. A shower, a meal, a Morgan-shaped blur. It’s hard to separate moments when they keep coming so quickly, one after the next, in startling technicolor. So vibrant they can practically brush against the seconds as they titter past.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“You’re home,” everyone keeps saying. Peter tracks Sam, Bucky, Nat, out of the corner of his eye. They, walking and upright and doing their best to put on the padding of weight they’d shed, are the best things Peter’s periphery finds. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>A day goes by, then two, and Peter knows he’s not </span>
  <em>
    <span>there</span>
  </em>
  <span> anymore because May, who arrives after ditching her shift in a whirlwind of scrubs and sobbing, kisses his face so many times it takes five minutes to wash the lipstick off, and he and MJ have some wild reunion sex in his bedroom while everyone is out in the lake, and because he can suck down three tubes of Pringles and a box of mac &amp; cheese for dinner and no one can stop him from eating. MJ and May stay for a day and then they have to go back to the city for work and Peter appreciates it and hates it and hurts. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Because the thing is that, as much as Peter knows he’s not there any more. It feels like he is. Really. Really, it does, and it sucks, and Peter wants to cry all the fucking time about it.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It’s worst at night, in the dark, and first thing in the morning, when he isn’t quite sure where he is yet. He wakes in a soupy middle space, blurrily navy blue and the grey of thick chenille and he has to tear through it with purpose in his fingertips, and it hurts. It’s hard. Like paddling along a river with a canoe made of his own bones, with his hands as the oars, smacking against roughage and outcroppings of rock, and Peter always aches with it. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It’s hard being in the dark. In the dark, everything is shadow, even the things that are real. When the sun comes up, things are more defined. Less ghostly. Liminality cracks under the sun’s smile. Daytime is better. Peter counts the breaths until daybreak. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He tries to sleep at first. Really, he does, but he has a nightmare on the first night and wakes Morgan with his heavy breathing and she comes running into the room and starts crying because Peter is crying and then he spends the rest of the night awake, holding her to his chest and stroking her hair and counting her breaths and keeping his eyelids wrenched open, watching things move in the dark, protecting her from them.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He hasn’t bothered since then. Scaring Morgan is just about his worst nightmare ever. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>And he’s doing fine, he thinks: he’s eating more to keep his energy up and he’s bumming in the lake and on the dock and on the couches and drinking, like, so many Red Bulls to keep himself awake. They make his hands shake and his eyelids twitch and his brain feel like celluloid reeling through a tape player and, sometimes, he thinks they make him start to see stuff moving in his periphery again, but he’s awake, and he keeps his lamp on overnight to chase away the shadowy things, and it’s fine. He is. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It’s working until he hits his seventh can in twenty-four hours and has a jittery flashback so intense he blacks out while in the middle of peeing and then stumbles backwards into the bathtub and knocks himself out on the porcelain.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>That’s where Tony draws the line.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>And he does it dirty, too. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“You brought </span>
  <em>
    <span>Maria Hill</span>
  </em>
  <span> here?” Peter hisses. Then, anxiously, “wait, is this real Maria Hill? Because I knew a fake Maria Hill briefly and I’m, uh, I’m not thrilled if it’s that version again because she seemed like she didn’t care whether I lived or died.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Real Maria,” says Tony, brandishing his arm. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Maria gives a dry smile. “Hi, Peter,” she says. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>This does not satisfy him.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She stares at him a moment, then says, “The first time we actually met you got so nervous you spilled your iced tea on me and I told you to get me some paper towel or perish.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Peter nods a little, relaxing. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“I forget how scary you are when you’re not around,” says Tony conversationally. “No, really, I do, because the impact you leave on me is just so warm and fuzzy.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Maria Hill is a grizzly bear in high heeled boots. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Can we get to the point, Tony?” she says. “I have better things to do than get ticks out here in the wilderness.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Getting your first tick is character building,” Tony says, and then stops himself. “Okay, fine. Fine. We gotta talk to you, Pete. We gotta come up with a solution.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Huh?” Peter says.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“You four are… not doing well,” Tony says.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“You’re not up to the quality of service the Avengers need from our first responders at this point,” Hill corrects smoothly. “No one expects you to be, of course, but we need to fix this now before it becomes a bigger problem later. For the world, for SHIELD, and for you guys.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Huh,” Peter says. He sits heavily on the couch, and Hill sits beside him. Tony perches himself on the coffee table facing them both, his knees pressed to Peter’s, leaning forward as if every inch he lets Peter out of his grasp pains him.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“There have been days when Tasha has grilled me three times during the same conversation to make sure I’m not an imposter,” says Tony softly. “Sam flinches every time the toaster oven beeps. Barnes is—Christ, the poor guy is a mess.” This is true. Bucky has night terrors like no one else, and his sweet, charming disposition is being swallowed by something dry and sarcastic and defensive. It breaks Peter’s heart, and Peter didn’t even know him when he was last like this, on the run from HYDRA and seeing ghosts around every bend in the road. Peter loves Bucky always, but he misses the version of him that started stickball games on the grounds of the new Compound and taught him to cook latkes. “And you—kid, I haven’t seen you close your eyes for longer than the eighth of a second it takes for you to blink since two-thousand-eighteen.” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Peter shrugs. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“No shrug!” says Tony. “That’s what we’re trying to stop! Take yourself seriously for once, take your—fucking trauma seriously, stop that!”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Okay, then what?” Peter says, finding himself becoming annoyed, which is no particular surprise to him. Tony has always had a special ability to piss him off with about three words and a slight shift in posture, since their very first, vaguely condescending meeting. “What, what do you want me to do, Tony?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Tony takes a breath. “Hill and SHIELD and I want you and the other four to take the summer off. The whole summer, completely retired, to recuperate.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Peter feels his jaw drop. A terrible wave of emotion wallops him in his stomach, the polar opposite of it smacking him across the cheek. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“I offered to build you guys a little vacation home,” Tony says quietly. “SHIELD approved. May approved. Natasha approved already, too, actually. She wants to help design it because she’s a control freak masking her control issues as a sudden penchant for interior design.” Tony rubs the bridge of his nose. “It’ll be the four of you. Just the four of you, and you’ll be right here in Ithaca, by me. On the other side of downtown, not too close, so I won’t be, y’know, sitting on your eggs or whatever, but—yeah. You’ll all go to mandated therapy sessions, we’ll see if you need meds and get you on a dosage that works, and you’ll all recuperate together, because being alone would be garbage, but you also won’t be in a pristine, like, hospital facility somewhere, because none of you would like that. Especially now. After.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>After, </span>
  </em>
  <span>Peter thinks.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“You’ll see as much or as little of me and the rest of us retired folks as you want,” Tony adds. Peter can’t stop trying to read Tony’s gaze. The rest of him, the set of his lips and his brows and his shoulders, he controls like a fucking professional actor, like he was molded to be in the public eye—which he was, Peter remembers with irrational anger towards Howard Stark, he </span>
  <em>
    <span>was—</span>
  </em>
  <span> but the sunglasses were always clincher to the act because behind them lies everything there is to know about Tony Stark. And what Peter sees now is that Tony is desperate and guilty and </span>
  <em>
    <span>terrified. </span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Um,” says Peter. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Because the thing is, Peter is on the volatile footpath towards losing his marbles. The flashbacks haven’t been bad yet, but he doesn’t want them to </span>
  <em>
    <span>get</span>
  </em>
  <span> bad, and he’s always had incessant anxiety, which feeds into his chest, opening it like a black cavern that could easily suck him down and swallow him whole. The nightmares, he’s been prone to them forever. He just doesn’t want it all to compile and have himself end up at the bottom of Lake Cayuga or something. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>And this is a surprisingly happy medium for Tony. Tony, who would usually offer to take Peter in on bedside care, catering to him hand and foot. And it’s not that Peter </span>
  <em>
    <span>wants</span>
  </em>
  <span> that, no, it’s mortifying, but this is probably the sanest idea Tony has ever had </span>
  <em>
    <span>ever.</span>
  </em>
  <span> Peter gets along with Nat and Bucky and Sam, and now he’ll be able to keep them safe. It’ll be like moving in with his friends for a summer. And he’s planning on living with Johnny next semester anyway—this is like a trial run on Having Adult Roommates. Cooking for himself and cleaning and laundry and junk. And it’ll keep May from worrying about his safety for once.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>MJ, though—half her summer will be in Los Angeles on an internship. The half she’s back, she’ll want to see him, and if he can’t be around for her?</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“MJ,” says Peter. This is his whole argument. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Can stay with you,” Tony says. “She’s gone the first half of the summer, right? Right. So, we reassess as it gets closer to July. We keep logs. That’s how people track things, right? Logs?” He waves a hand. “Whatever. We see if you can handle her being there, and if you can, and if she wants to be, then I can’t say no, and I doubt May will either.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Peter stares.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Tony shrugs helplessly. “You’re an adult, Pete.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“So, just,” Peter says. “Like, living together? Keeping an eye on each other and, like, not superheroing? At all?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“And therapy,” says Tony. “That is the most important part of this entire agreement and you and your four-gallon eye bags ignored it.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Peter says, “When did you become the poster child for therapy? You sound like those commercials for rehab centers that pop on on Spotify if you listen to Post Malone for too many hours straight.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“That reminds me,” Tony says. “I’ll put in a landline, but no cell phones.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“What!” Peter yelps as his stomach drops into his balls. </span>
  <em>
    <span>There</span>
  </em>
  <span> is his thing. His no-no thing. Holy cow. “What, what did you just say?” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“What!” comes another yelp, and it’s Bucky Barnes, peering around the wall from Tony’s kitchen, wearing an apron and stirring a metal bowl of something with his phone tucked between his shoulder and his jaw. “You’re not my dad, you can’t take my phone.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“You’re not my dad, you can’t take my phone,” Peter echoes in agreement, nodding. A moment. “Sorry, dad, just the way it is.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Tony flicks an eyebrow. “I’ll tell May to take it, then.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“I’m twenty,” Peter reminds him. “That’s pretty old. Grown up and everything. I’ve got a long-term girlfriend and I’m almost old enough to drink without permission and I can drive.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Tony has this fond expression on his face. It says, indubiously, </span>
  <em>
    <span>Aw, a baby.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“You just said I’m an adult two minutes ago!”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Only with regards to sexy things.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Oh-kay,” says Hill, wincing and waving that statement away.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Peter says, once more, but far less certainly, “You can’t take my phone.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>May takes his phone. May also takes Natasha’s phone, and Sam’s, and Bucky’s, and then Steve takes all eight of Bucky’s burner phones, all three of Nat’s, and Sam’s one emergency flip-phone. Peter is unsure whether he thinks Sam is the sanest of them or by far the least sane.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>May sits at the head of his bed beside him and holds him for a long time before she tells him, “If you need me, I’ll come. I can—I don’t know. I’ll—Peter, you know I’d totally quit my job for you—”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Oh my gosh, May,” Peter says, and she shakes her head, going, “I know, I know, but I mean it, Peter, I mean it.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“I know you do, which is why it hurts me!”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Pete…” she says. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He nuzzles into her neck. “I’m a grown up now,” he says. “I’ll be with Sam and Nat and Buck, and I’ll be able to call you all the time, and Tony will be right here, sitting on my eggs whether he says he will or not.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“That’s the only reason I’m feeling somewhat calm about this,” May admits, toying with his hair. “I trust him and I trust you and I trust this therapist Tony found you. I trust that this will help you. And, besides, you need a break.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“I don’t need a break,” Peter mumbles petulantly. “I’m doing so great, I never need a break, I’m the energizer bunny.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>May laughs so hard he doesn’t have the wherewithal to even continue arguing. He settles into her warmth and gives himself this last night with her before the city snatches her back up from him. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>After May leaves, they really get down to business. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The chalet-slash-wooden-house-slash-glorified-AirBnb is designed using some intense 3-D blueprints and building software, and Natasha chooses their decor by sending them pictures of things and having them react to the image with a thumbs up or down. If it’s a thumbs up, she usually responds with a thick block of hearts and kissy faces, so there’s always incentive to like the decor she chooses. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“I’m putting Sam and Bucky in a bedroom together,” Natasha tells them the night before the contractors break ground for the cabin-thing. The whole place will be up within five days, and they’re staying with Tony until then. Natasha’s feet are tucked under Peter’s thighs from one direction and Bucky’s are under him from the other, and Sam sits alone on an armchair across from them like a loner. Peter thinks it’s a miracle none of the Starks are hanging around to bring them water and snacks and offer Ibuprofen.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“What,” wails Sam as if she’s castrated him right here in front of them all.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“If Bucky wakes up from a nightmare, you’re the best at talking him down,” Natasha says. “Steve probably won’t be local,” this is news to Peter, who had assumed if MJ is invited to stay then Steve is too, “and I’m too likely to trigger him into a different flashback. Peter is… Peter.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“I think I take offense,” Peter says.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Natasha shrugs as if saying </span>
  <em>
    <span>if you must.</span>
  </em>
  <span> “Kitchen is small-ish, which is big for any of us because this is still semi-Stark-scale. The basement will be a sound-proofed, fully-equipped gymnasium and dance studio. Punching bags, weight machines, you’ve got it all, boys—” she looks at Sam and Bucky, and then her eyes flick to Peter and she wiggles her toes under his ass just to bug him, “and Petya and I can whip out our old dancing shoes, hm?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Oof,” says Peter, imagining the pain of opening his hips again. “I might be… beyond my dancing days, Nat.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“You’re as naturally agile as a walrus,” she agrees, “but your enhancements will help you adapt, I’m sure.” She leaves the printed blueprints on her lap and raises her arms above her head in fifth position, delicate and rounded.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Make sure I got a real good leg machine,” says Sam, snuggling deeper into his armchair. “It’s all in the thighs, you know.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“So I’ve been told,” Natasha says. “By you, so many, many times.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Peter snorts a little. Then jumps, shaken. He’s not—well, he’s not surprised by the sound, per se, but it feels nice.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>And then Natasha snorts, this big, throaty thing, and it’s terrible and gross, and that sets Bucky off laughing, his head falling forward onto his chest, and Sam is snickering alone in the other seat until Peter scoots closer to Bucky and makes room for Sam to cross over and wedge himself next to Nat, and they’re sort of dog-piled, but it’s sort of everything to Peter right now.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He finds a grasp on Bucky’s wrist and Sam’s ankle and he watches Sam encircle Nat and he breathes.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>➴➵➶➴➵➶➴➵➶➴➵➶➴➵➶</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Peter—” says Tony, his hands on Peter’s shoulders, his thumbs rubbing back and forth. “I need you to, like, take a breather, okay? With me. Can you do that?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“I’m not panicking, Tony,” Peter says.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“No, of course you’re not, not at all, you’re just hyperventilating and spiraling, which do not a panic attack always make.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“You—suck—”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Talk to me, come on,” they slide down against the wall of Peter’s bedroom, the one by the closet they had been packing only moments before Peter had his knees knocked out from under him by some breathless, bastardly thing.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Okay, but, like. I know this is a good idea, I do, I really do. I approve the idea, it’s good for all of us, but, um. What if I wake up screaming in the middle of the night because I think I’m buried under a mountain of concrete and ash, or shot through the middle of the forehead, or something?” says Peter. “Or, like,” he continues, gaining traction, “what if I think you’re dead again, or Morgan, or May, or Pepper, or—all of you, what if I think all of you are dead and I see your corpses scattered in front of me like—rotten fruit fallen off a tree? What then?” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“That’s heavy,” comes a voice from the door. Natasha. Then, after a moment, “You’ll be fine.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“That’s exactly the type of attitude we want to eradicate,” comes Hill’s cheerful voice from Nat’s side. “If you keep talking like that, Tony might literally kill me. He gave me a colorful list of things he’ll do if you guys aren’t seeing things straight by the end of the summer, so I wouldn’t put it past him.” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“She’s telling the truth,” Tony says with equal gaiety.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Fuck SHIELD,” gasps Peter, a diluted mockery of the way John Mulaney once said </span>
  <em>
    <span>fuck the police.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“One thousand percent, completely,” comes Steve Rogers’s voice with a solemn nod, and Peter laughs. The sound of it startles him. He didn’t realize how crazy he was until he heard the fucking—Joker, the Joker laughing using his throat. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Wow, get me in the summer solitude chalet before my brownies get any more baked,” Peter says, pressing his palms against his temples, trying to massage his mind into a semblance of sanity. Everyone is outside his door now. They’re waiting on him and he’s wearing coffee-stained sweatpants and sitting on the ground like he’s gotta be washed with the laundry.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Five minutes, Comrades, Jesus, give the man some privacy,” Tony says, waving them away. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>As they go, Tony turns to give Peter an exasperated look, like </span>
  <em>
    <span>some people.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Peter manages a weak smile. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Tony says, “Aw, bud. C’mere. This calls for a cuddle. A Tony Stark cuddle, to which no other cuddle will ever compare for mine are simply supreme. Inexplicably.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Peter tilts into Tony’s chest, letting Tony shift him around to fit properly. This was easier when Peter was a head shorter than Tony, when he was still fifteen, when the scariest thing in the world to him was Doc Ock blowing through the McDonald’s arches on his way to eviscerate Oscorp. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Peter closes his eyes and tries to imagine the stroke of Tony’s hand on his back easing his tension, trailing it down his arms, into his toes, and out of him. Sounds like some hippie dippie thing May would say, so he believes it doubly. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>They fall away from each other without talking and finish packing the last of Peter’s clothes in silence. Peter tries to shoulder his duffel bag and Tony holds a hand out, stopping him, even as Peter gives him a dry look. When he sees how serious Tony is, any teasing air falls out of him and he reaches out to take Tony’s hand, needing the support to make it out of the cabin. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Everyone is waiting in Tony’s foyer, bags on their shoulders, the new summer hovel’s Ford F-350 waiting to be packed up.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“We’ll be around so often you’ll be sick of us in no time,” Steve says, squeezing Bucky’s hand.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“I’ve been sick of you for a century,” says Bucky. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Sure you have, punk,” says Steve, and they fall together like they were meant to. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Pepper and Morgan hug Natasha like they never plan to let go, Pepper mourning the loss of a competent woman around full-time and Morgan, the loss of her dance partner. They all keep a firm eye on Mo to make sure she doesn’t try to hide in the truck bed. She’s been known to stowaway. It runs in the family, apparently.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Peter thinks hard on MJ, on the way she held him before Happy drove her to the airport to leave for her internship the day before. Of her coconut shampoo and her embroidered tank top rough against his palms and her last wish for him: </span>
  <em>
    <span>try, Peter, because you deserve it.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Rhodey hugs him so tight Peter tears up from the force and then musses his hair before he lets him go. They pack themselves in the truck, Tony gives him one last peck on the cheek, and he wonders why it feels like he’s ripping out a row of stitches by hand.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>➴➵➶➴➵➶➴➵➶➴➵➶➴➵➶</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Maybe okaying all of Natasha’s interior decorating whims wasn’t their best plan ever.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>There’s a bay window for each of them somewhere in the house. Bookshelves that stand taller than any of them and Peter feels certain he will be exploited to climb, to reach the farthest texts. A bidet in the bathroom, which Peter needs an explanation for at first and then suddenly does not want anymore. Big, fluffy blankets on the end of every couch. A grand piano, and Peter wonders which of them can play. A new camera in his bedroom. A garden for Bucky. Their rooms are papered with posters and paintings and artfully distressed maps, because Natasha, as always, knows everything there is to know about their interests.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>High ceilings and vantage points from any angle—great sight lines.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Bucky and Sam may share a bedroom, but they’ve got two beds. They want everyone to be very aware of that fact. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“You let them use a pair of double-doors as the entrance to their room,” Peter says, tapping the back of Natasha’s hand with a knuckle. “Like a creepy sex dungeon.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“You think double-doors make a sex dungeon?” says Bucky. “Did you see the literal knight armor Natasha put in the living room? Next to the fireplace?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“He has the best sightline in the house,” Natasha says primly. “Sir Jagermeister will keep watch of us while we sleep.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Sir Jagermeister,” repeats Sam. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Oy gevalt,” murmurs Peter, who has experienced some of his lowest moments while under Jager’s cruel influence. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“That rusty thing definitely fits better in a sex dungeon than our gorgeous mahogany doors,” Bucky says. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“He’s not rusty,” says Nat. “I scrubbed him down with jewelry cleaner and a toothbrush.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Rub a fuckin’ dub,” says Sam. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“I need to go lie down,” Peter announces, and then he turns on his heel without much ceremony to be had and does just that. He fumbles through his freshly filled closet and finds his favorite heated blanket. Plugs it in. Wraps himself in it like a burrito. Lets it gently toast his ass until a doze overcomes him and he drifts.</span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>oy gevalt - like "oh woe is me" or "oh how terrible" or, the italian, "madonna mia" LMAO i was looking for an approximate language translation but a perfect translation of the sentiment and this is it</p><p>a little short chapter before we get into the juicy juice!! the next one will probably be up sooner bc this one was like cheating sorry but we need a lil' exposition and set-up sometimes</p><p>i love u keep letting me know what you think!!! &lt;333</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. a bushel and a peck</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>“Jesus, what happened to you?” says Peter as he chews his bagel. </p><p>“Buck will not stop singing that one line of <em>Party in the USA</em> in my ear. The <em>butterflies fly away</em> part,” Sam says. Peter chokes on a hunk of bagel and Nat hammers on his back as Sam continues talking, ignoring them as he pours himself a glass of orange juice. “He lays there in the dark, staring up at the ceiling, and sings it. Calls me Butterfly Boy. He thinks he’s hilarious. Three in the g-ddamn <em>morning</em> he leans over my mattress in the <em>dark,</em> in the dark like a <em>ghost,</em> and he sings it right into my <em>ear.”</em></p><p>As if summoned, Bucky’s voice comes floating along the air vents from his and Sam’s bedroom. <em>“I put my hands up, they’re playing my song, the butterflies fly away,”</em> he sings, and it sounds creepy somehow. </p><p>“Dude,” Peter leaps onto the tabletop, flattens his palms on the ceiling, pulls himself up, and crawls across it to reach the vent. “Dude,” he yells into it, “what the <em>fuck.”</em></p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>check endnotes for vague vague vague trigger warning, i'm really just adding it to be super extra safe</p><p>also: disclaimer! i went to college in ithaca for one (1) year so all the descriptions in this chapter are from memory! </p><p>secondary disclaimer!: i have memory issues! legit ones! from a dissociative disorder! please forgive me and gently correct me if i got things wrong with the layout of ithaca in general! i tried to be vague purposely to avoid that! i love you!</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p><b>Peter’s New Daily To-Do, by Peter and </b> <strike><b>Doctor</b> <b>Katherine-call-me-</b></strike> <b>Katie </b> <strike> <b>Osmond</b> </strike></p><ol>
<li>Wake up. Don’t get out of bed until at least 9 am. Give yourself the opportunity to sleep until then. <strike>(Fat chance. <em>Peter, at least try.)</em></strike>
</li>
<li>Work out for an hour. Follow plans from Doctor Cho.</li>
<li>Breakfast. Food, Peter, not just sugary coffee. <strike>(Yeah, alright. Whatever.)</strike> Take your meds with your meal.</li>
<li>Find some hobbies. Pick up photography again, learn to knit, try painting. Relax.</li>
<li>Lunchtime by 1 pm. Something with protein and vegetables. Whatever you may think, they’re not the antichrist.</li>
<li>Therapy from 2 pm - 3 pm.</li>
<li>Go destress from 3 pm until you calm down all the way. </li>
<ol>
<li>Snack! Eat food! Your metabolism is too fast for how little you eat! <strike>(I’m not six, Doctor Osmond.)</strike>
</li>
</ol>
<li>More free time. Go for a run, do some reading, until 6 pm.</li>
<li>See if Barnes needs help making dinner. Must be finished by 7 pm.</li>
<li>Movies and free time until 10 pm. </li>
<li>Get in bed by 12 am. <strike>(</strike><strike>That’s ridiculous. I can’t believe you’re giving me a bed-time. <em>When you can prove you no longer need someone to dictate how and when to take care of yourself, we can nix the bedtime. Until then, 12 am, Peter.)</em></strike>
</li>
</ol><p> </p><p>➴➵➶➴➵➶➴➵➶➴➵➶➴➵➶</p><p> </p><p>Peter finds it hard to keep track of the passing days without his phone in his hand. It’s hard to conceptualize anything when he can’t idly check Twitter three times in a row to find no new tweets. He can’t tag Tony in weird Instagram memes. He can’t look at pictures of MJ and Ned and Johnny and Morgan except for the few he’s got printed and tacked to his wall. </p><p> </p><p>It’s a slurry, constantly, time moving like bright blue slushee, and Peter voices to Sam, in the quiet stillness of early morning, that he still isn’t sure if they ever left—that it felt too easy, too quick. Is Sam sure Beck is dead this time? How can they know?</p><p> </p><p>In response, Sam drops a <em> FRIENDS </em> themed calendar on top of his desk and begins to carve a neat ‘x’ through every day that has passed. He says while he draws, “Do you think anything Beck coulda’ dreamed up would have given us an opportunity for peace like this?” </p><p> </p><p>Another ‘x’ on the calendar and Sam adds, “Stark didn’t want to tell you, but I think you deserve to know. SHIELD had a team raid the building. It was abandoned, but they saw the—uh, body there.” Sam sniffs. “They blew the whole damn thing up.” He squeezes Peter’s shoulder before he goes.</p><p> </p><p>Peter thinks about it a lot. Dead and gone. Dead and gone. He repeats <em> safe </em> under his breath until it no longer feels like a word. </p><p> </p><p>Sometimes he’s sure the woods is watching him.</p><p> </p><p>➴➵➶➴➵➶➴➵➶➴➵➶➴➵➶</p><p> </p><p>Peter’s eyes burn once he hits the third night, midnight thick and soupy as it pours through his window, star-speckled and silver and deep violet. Peter rises from his bed and stands in a section of light where it carves a square on his carpet. It turns his skin greyish. It feels right. He feels wraithish. At the end of his blinks, something twitches in his periphery, sharp and quick, lithe and splintered. A dangling eyelash, perhaps, prodding him, or something worse, something skeletal, something that clatters while it moves like metal chains and sticky gears. His fingers itch to hold his phone, which is all but a distant memory by now. He runs through with rivers raging clumsily around their own corners, spilling onto the earth of him and turning grass into mud. Peter rolls in the muck of it all. He wonders why he can’t see it on his skin. Not a bruise left. Not a scar to show for it. His ankle hardly twinges when he walks. How does he know it happened if he is unchanged. How does he <em> know. </em></p><p> </p><p>“Fuck,” Peter mumbles. Like stardust shimmering in the still air of his bedroom. Loose on the lips of the breeze. “Fuck,” he repeats, and he tries to dig his toes into the carpet to no avail. Scrabbles at the comforter balled at the end of his bed, but can’t lift it, and his breathing picks up, he feels sweat lap at his neck, at his temples, he yanks at the mouth of his shirt, he is choking. His feet fall out from under him and his knees knock onto the floor, a thud muffled by the cotton beneath him, he knows it’s wrong but he digs his face into the bedside and holds his breath, smothering his nose and mouth until his neck goes cold and his fingers numb and his vision blacks out. </p><p> </p><p>When he opens his eyes again, the room has not changed save for the new silence, now unimpeded by his breathing. His head aches. He hasn’t had to knock himself out like that since he was a teenager, young and stupid, and he can’t help but bask in the moment of strange, twisted euphoria it brings him.</p><p> </p><p>Once he feels solid enough, he rises and returns to the head of his bed, where he sits. He opens the top drawer of his nightstand and pulls out the bottle of melatonin gummies Tony had given him as a going-away gift. He chews down forty blackberry-flavored milligrams and shoves himself under the sheets.</p><p> </p><p>Fifteen minutes and he’s asleep, but the sleep is strange, maudlin and slanted like marching through marshlands with a blindfold over his eyes. He can’t lift his feet properly enough to walk and no matter how he turns, where he looks, he cannot see. He hears, however. Too sharp, even sharper than he hears when he’s awake, the lisp of a lip against front teeth and the spray of spit as the voice laughs aloud. It pairs with another, lower, calmer voice, and Peter’s stomach is rolling bowling-ball heavy and seems to have no intention to slow. </p><p> </p><p>“Help,” he says. “Tony? Help me, please.”</p><p> </p><p><em> Little bug, </em> one breathes.</p><p> </p><p>The other throws his head back and shouts a laugh, <em> Petey, Petey, you never learn. </em></p><p> </p><p>Peter realizes, with a jolt, his voice is strangled, choked. Thick and wavering and uneven. He can still see Sam’s hands, hear the sickening pop, the terrible angle of a crooked spine. </p><p> </p><p>“Help, help, help,” Peter mumbles.</p><p> </p><p><em> There is no one to help you here, </em> says one.</p><p> </p><p><em> They will never find you, </em> says the other with glee. <em> Mine now, Petey. </em></p><p> </p><p>His heart is fluttering, uneven, weak hummingbird wings, trying to fly while soaking wet.</p><p> </p><p>“Help,” he says, his voice rising into a raw yell. His shoulders tremble. Every breath is a sour, dusty gasp, his mouth papered, dry, he is busted plaster casts littered at his feet, he is a pine box with the top opened up and the velvet lining awaiting him. “Help, <em> please,” </em> he shouts, thick, jagged. </p><p> </p><p>Peter struggles one foot free of the sticky thing trapping him and falls to all fours. Before his knees can hit, they begin to flake off, his thighs, his calves, gone, Peter can hear them in the wind around him like confetti in the summer. He wrenches his eyes open. Beneath him, what he was sinking into, is webbing, a deep pool of it swallowing him voraciously, and then he wakes.</p><p> </p><p>He sits jackknifed, straight up, gasping, a weight pressing on his throat. </p><p> </p><p>There is a landline phone on his nightstand. It is shaped like <a href="https://www.throwbacks.com/12-novelty-phones-that-will-actually-make-you-miss-having-a-landline/"> Kermit sitting in an office chair </a> because Tony is an asshole and that alone makes Peter not want to call him. And May must be asleep. She works so much, Peter should let her sleep, he shouldn’t call, and besides. He shouldn’t need to. He’s fucking twenty. He’s an adult. He doesn’t need Mommy and Daddy to talk him down every time his brain rattles him harder than usual.</p><p> </p><p>He rises and begins to walk, fast and uneven, his ears full of his own heartbeat. He sits himself on the floor in the middle of the kitchen, where he can see the door and the living room windows, and stays there until the sun rises.</p><p> </p><p>Eventually Natasha comes, stepping over and around him to make tea and toast, which she offers and he denies.</p><p> </p><p>Eventually he stands. Maybe it is Natasha’s familiarity that settles him, or maybe it is something else, but he feels real again, seeing her.</p><p> </p><p>Hill and Tony had a point. Being together makes it easier.</p><p> </p><p>Sam comes down late in the morning, knuckling his eyes, looking hungover or concussed or decimated by the flu, or something. </p><p> </p><p>“Jesus, what happened to you?” says Peter as he chews his bagel. </p><p> </p><p>“Buck will not stop singing that one line of <em> Party in the USA </em> in my ear. The <em> butterflies fly away </em> part,” Sam says. Peter chokes on a hunk of bagel and Nat hammers on his back as Sam continues talking, ignoring them as he pours himself a glass of orange juice. “He lays there in the dark, staring up at the ceiling, and sings it. Calls me Butterfly Boy. He thinks he’s hilarious. Three in the g-ddamn <em> morning </em> he leans over my mattress in the <em>dark,</em> in the dark like a <em> ghost, </em> and he sings it right into my <em>ear.”</em></p><p> </p><p>As if summoned, Bucky’s voice comes floating along the air vents from his and Sam’s bedroom. <em> “I put my hands up, they’re playing my song, the butterflies fly away,” </em> he sings, and it sounds creepy somehow. </p><p> </p><p>“Dude,” Peter leaps onto the tabletop, flattens his palms on the ceiling, pulls himself up, and crawls across it to reach the vent. “Dude,” he yells into it, “what the <em> fuck.” </em></p><p> </p><p>Bucky just laughs, loud and a little crazed.</p><p> </p><p>“Therapy!” Sam hollers. “I’m bringing this up in therapy!”</p><p> </p><p>Natasha throws a banana at Peter and he nearly falls off the ceiling, his feet coming unstuck as he struggles to avoid it. An entire fucking grapefruit follows and when it hits Peter smack on the jaw he <em> does </em> fall, hitting the ground with a rattle, and the kitchen descends into chaos, fruit flying and Bucky laughing and Peter bemoaning what is promising to be a summer completely devoid of the rest they’re supposed to be getting.</p><p> </p><p>➴➵➶➴➵➶➴➵➶➴➵➶➴➵➶</p><p> </p><p>Mornings begin to take on a semblance of a routine. Maybe one of them will scream themselves awake, shaking the rest of them from uneasy sleep. Less often, it is the sun that wakes them. Sometimes the three boys are up and about and one of them needs to go sit by Natasha until she feels like she can peel herself out of her sheets. </p><p> </p><p>Peter works out, then. He usually does weights. Sometimes someone will come with him and they’ll spar. Sometimes Natasha makes good on her promise and they pick up with ballet, their rusty joints and tight, round muscles slowly, slowly beginning to lengthen, lithen, glide. </p><p> </p><p>Sam reads Jane Austen. Natasha watches Spongebob. Bucky knits. </p><p> </p><p>Natasha picks the lock on the bathroom door so she can piss while Peter is showering and when he comes out with a towel slung around his hips, they both stare at the reflection of webshooters on his wrists in the misty mirror. </p><p> </p><p>She turns around with her toothbrush in her mouth and takes his hands in hers, delicately. She twists the metal cuffs until she finds the latches, takes them off him. She pockets them. He feels bald.</p><p> </p><p>Peter nods a little, neck stiff, jaw creaking from how tight he clenches it.</p><p> </p><p>She grabs his damp shoulders and squeezes them. “When you feel like you want them, find me instead,” is all she says, toothpaste on her lips, the handle of her brush poking out of the corner of her mouth stupidly.</p><p> </p><p>Peter says, a little weakly, “I love you.”</p><p> </p><p>She spits her mouthful of paste, leans up to press a kiss on the tip of his nose, and leaves.</p><p> </p><p>Bucky will make eggs, or bacon, or pancakes. There will be cinnamon raisin bread ready to go in the oven, having risen overnight. Sam will pour everyone orange juice and Natasha will make tea and Peter will set the table. They will sit down and eat together.</p><p> </p><p>Five days and it becomes stuffy. Being here no longer feels sheltered, like separation, but cloistered. Musty and small and Peter itches.</p><p> </p><p>They want to go out. It’s just that it feels… not safe. </p><p> </p><p>Of course, Sam, Natasha, and Bucky run the risk of being recognized. That is enough in itself to discourage them. </p><p> </p><p>But, Peter assures—what with the way the sun has begun to stain their skin already, Barnes breaking out in a smattering of faded freckles and keeping his hair trimmed short and fluffy, Sam having shaved the beard off his goatee to leave a stupid mustache, and Natasha having cut her hair to rest just below her shoulders in natural, frizzed up curls—they look less like superheroes on sabbatical and more like a handful of post-grad students renting a place for the summer to <em> get back to nature </em> and <em> rediscover themselves</em>. Which Peter guesses isn’t too far off.</p><p> </p><p>Natasha is wearing a pretty linen sundress when she meets Peter on the deck where he’s waiting for the rest to be ready. He has a glass of iced tea in hand and he’s trying to calm himself, even out his breathing. On Natasha’s feet is a pair of Birkenstocks, which makes Peter snort his drink up his nose. </p><p> </p><p>Natasha says, “Laugh it up, city boy. They’re surprisingly comfortable. I told Tony to order you a pair. They’re coming in next week.”</p><p> </p><p>“Will wonders never cease?” Peter sputters, massaging his chest. “Are they brown, at least?”</p><p> </p><p>“I almost got you red plastic ones, but then I realized I wouldn’t want to be seen with you dressed like that.”</p><p> </p><p>“Nice,” Peter says. “Good thing, too, because I would’ve started saying <em> Kachow! </em> every time I pulled them on and making racecar noises while I run.”</p><p> </p><p>Natasha takes his tea and sips at it. It’s weird seeing her so clean-faced, so undone. He likes it a lot.</p><p> </p><p>“You do look nice,” he says. “Really.”</p><p> </p><p>“You don’t think wearing white makes me look like spoiled cream?” she says.</p><p> </p><p>“Nah,” says Peter, wrinkling his nose. Natasha is a yellowish sort of pale, sure, but the sunshine seems to make her gently glow, with shiny orange gloss on her lips and a broad-brimmed hat in her tote bag. “You really look like you’re thriving, actually. The nice, frilly stuff suits you. Like, everyone who thinks you’re super punk-rock is wrong.”</p><p><br/>“I’m very refined,” Natasha agrees.</p><p> </p><p>“I was going to say you dress like a fucking dork eighty percent of the time and like you’re in a perfume ad the other twenty percent, but sure.”</p><p> </p><p>“Ah. Nice.”</p><p> </p><p>“I’ve seen your pacman t-shirt collection.”</p><p> </p><p>“He’s cute.”</p><p> </p><p>“So are you.”</p><p> </p><p>Natasha punches him on the shoulder and gives his tea back to him. The deck creaks as Sam comes out, shirtless with a pair of tight jeans on his legs, Bucky at his shoulder. Bucky has removed his Wakandan arm and pinned the end of his sleeve up.</p><p> </p><p>“I will absolutely not wear these damn skinny pants, puttin’ my whole wang on display for the general public, no thank you,” says Sam, clearly in medias res. “I will, however, deign to wear these fancy new joggers.” He holds them up, shaking them out. “Look at ‘em. Green. They’re cool, right?”</p><p> </p><p>“Sam,” says Bucky, “you go to bed in <em> just socks </em> and, knowing that, I will never be able to believe you have any grasp upon what should be worn on the human body.” </p><p> </p><p>“Parker said these joggers are cool when I bought them.”</p><p> </p><p>“That’s stupid.”</p><p> </p><p>“I’m sorry,” Peter yelps. “Sorry, sorry.”</p><p> </p><p>Sam flicks an eyebrow. “Why?”</p><p> </p><p>Peter blinks, settles slightly, then says, “I don’t even know. The last words my uncle said to me were about taking responsibility and if that didn’t magnify my already-prevalent raging guilt into something traumatic, then nothing in the world can traumatize me and there’s no reason for me to actually be here.”</p><p> </p><p>“That’s why we all have therapy now,” says Sam. “Do I wear the joggers or not?”</p><p> </p><p>“Wear shorts,” Peter says.</p><p> </p><p>“Ooh, good point,” says Sam. “Show off my thick thighs. This is why I come to Parker for fashion advice.”</p><p> </p><p>“Dumbass,” Bucky mumbles as Sam elbows past him and back into the house.</p><p> </p><p>It’s another ten minutes until they’re in the truck with their cash and a map of Ithaca and a thick stack of reusable canvas bags.</p><p> </p><p>Ten more minutes until they’re at the Farmer’s Market, and fifteen minutes of them sitting in their distant parking spot with their hearts pounding, Bucky’s head between his knees, Peter leaning on the glass of the window and checking every face he sees.</p><p> </p><p>“Fuck,” says Sam. “Fuck, come on. We gotta. We ran out of food. Come on.”</p><p> </p><p>“Shit,” says Peter. “I hate this. I hate this so much.”</p><p> </p><p>“Who really knows we’re living here? Maria and Nick? And our friends?” says Sam. “Do you really think any of them coulda’ let it loose to Beck’s crew where we are?”</p><p> </p><p>“I don’t know!” Peter yanks on the hem of his short-sleeved button up. MJ had bought it for him and sprayed it with her perfume before she left for her internship. It’s all faded pink and maroon and teal and tan and Peter thinks it would fit better into the desert landscape rather than this overly green place, but he wears it because her perfume tends to slow his brain down. “No, but, like, maybe they injected us with trackers and we didn’t know.”</p><p> </p><p>“Did Helen not give us medical exams? Did she not scan us for exactly that?” Sam says.</p><p> </p><p>“She did,” Peter allows. It doesn’t comfort him.</p><p> </p><p>“Fuck,” says Bucky. “Let’s fucking go, now, there was a lull in the crowd, come on, let’s go. Fuck.”</p><p> </p><p>They collect their bags and hop out of the car. They follow the crowds down the long dirt path towards the clearing where the market is set up along the edge of a dock. Trees hang low with flowering branches, spindly vines wrapped around them, fuzzy-tipped weeds blooming along the path edges. The air is thick with humidity. The horde is full with babbling children and teenagers sipping coffee and looking aloof; with grey-haired couples smiling as they prod at tomatoes and the scent of pollen and ducks in the water. </p><p> </p><p>The market is shaped like one long walkway with a single offshoot to the left mid-way along, leading to a short dock. Live music is playing right by the dock’s edge, where people sit in boats or dangle their feet in the water and chew on their purchases. Peter sees stalls selling jam, glassware, handmade wood products. Tapestries, Vietnamese food, a falafel stall thick with the scent of cumin and oil. Produce out the ears, robust and ripe and thickly colorful in hue. A stall selling just bread. A handful of bakeries. Some paintings and postcards. Cheese, perfumes, cider and wine. The roof above them is lined with winding fairy lights, and the whole place seems to writhe with raw chaos.</p><p> </p><p>He slips his pinky finger around Natasha’s, and she squeezes. </p><p> </p><p>“Okay,” she says weakly, then clears her throat and repeats it, fierce and sure. “Okay. Let’s stick together. We’ll go stall by stall.”</p><p> </p><p>“Mhm,” says Peter. </p><p> </p><p>“Yeah,” Bucky says hoarsely. Sam’s got an arm slung around his shoulders. </p><p> </p><p>They grab vegetables. Eggs. Jam and three loaves of fresh bread. Punnets of berries and bottles of mulberry wine. A jar of pesto. </p><p> </p><p>Peter grabs a few postcards. For MJ, May, Tony, Ned. To let them know he’s alive.</p><p> </p><p>Peter sees a man wearing a backpack with a tiny dog peering out of the top, and he gets to meet Snowflake and let her lap at his hand for a moment, and he even smiles. </p><p> </p><p>Three people thank Bucky for his service. </p><p> </p><p>They duck their heads when they sense pictures being taken—an unbreakable instinct. One they must cling to, especially now. The pictures are not meant to capture them, anyway, and they are protected, with Natasha’s hat big enough to mask her face in shadow and for Peter to duck behind when he needs. Bucky bends over under the guise of sniffing produce. Sam ducks behind their map, talking loudly about where they’ll go after this. (Nowhere, of course. Home. But still. The charade is what they live for, now.)</p><p> </p><p>Sam and Nat grab Cambodian food and Peter and Bucky get falafel and they all eat on the dock like everyone else, listening to an old man play his banjo and warble, watching the woman with two enormous guinea pigs show them off to the children hanging around. The wind stirs their hair, and they find a new place to let themselves settle, breathe, take root.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>tw: a vague description of peter purposely blacking out to stop himself from hyperventilating after a nightmare</p><p>hi guys i love you all!! it's so stormy today im living! i'm currently in a shakespeare lecture via zoom but i have not listened to this lecture not even once and i'm not about to change that now!!</p><p>leave me some comments, come be my friend on <a href="https://floweryfran.tumblr.com/">tumblr</a> or <a href="https://twitter.com/flowery_fran">twitter</a>!!!</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. staying alive (take that, ptsd, you sour bitch!)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>“Did anyone teach you to chew with your mouth closed?” comes a voice, tearing Peter’s reverie.</p><p>“Nope,” Peter says. “May thinks table manners are for pussies.”</p><p>“Sounds about right.” Natasha folds her legs as she sits next to Peter. She holds out grabby hands for the bottle. Peter passes it over. She takes a swig, stops, then takes another sip, rolling it through her mouth before swallowing with a puff of breath. Her constitution is iron-clad. She could drink him under the table three times, probably. “Fuck a table manner.”</p><p>“Fuck ‘em,” Peter agrees, taking the bottle back and guzzling more down. He keeps his eyes locked carefully upon the far horizon— the sloped, furry edge of the hills and pastel green grass against the clear sky. Everything is in sharp focus. He wants that to stop. Another sip.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>tw for underaged drinking that no one really addresses but like he's 20 and so sad let him live</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It has almost been two weeks now.</p><p> </p><p>The farmer’s market becomes a scheduled excursion every Wednesday at the East Hill Plaza location and Saturdays at the Pavilion.</p><p> </p><p>Peter and Bucky have also been to the dog park in town. That was fantastic and terrifying and they pet so many dogs and Bucky laughed so much that Peter thought he was going to lose his voice. </p><p> </p><p>Peter switches from daily therapy to every other day, and is happy because that sounds like a concrete sort of progress even if he still wakes up nauseous most mornings. At least now he wakes up, rather than already having been awake. That’s progress, too.</p><p> </p><p>Everything seems to be going fine until Thursday when Katherine-call-me-Katie says, sitting upon the back porch with him, “Peter, you talk so much about your friends living here, and that’s great. But when did you last see May? Or Tony? Morgan and Pepper?”</p><p> </p><p>And that brings Peter to pause.</p><p> </p><p>“Uh,” he says. “When I—left.”</p><p> </p><p>Katie flicks her eyebrows up. She does this a lot when Peter talks, because she is never afraid to treat him like a friend rather than a patient eight rungs below her and her four PhDs. Peter appreciates this and hates it in equal measure because it makes him far more likely to tell her things. “You know you’re allowed to see them, right?”</p><p> </p><p>“Yeah,” Peter says, “yeah, yeah, I guess we just, like, got caught up in all of the—” Peter waves his hands around and makes a sound like a windstorm. </p><p> </p><p>“Ah,” says Katie. “But you’re still calling them all, right?”</p><p> </p><p>“MJ whenever she’s free. Tony once a day and May twice,” he says. This is more May’s choice than Peter’s, because May likes rubbing it in Tony’s face that she talks to Peter more. Tony thinks it’s offensive. Peter doesn’t care, so long as he’s hearing their voices.</p><p> </p><p>“Alright,” says Katie. She crosses one leg over the other and her leather flip flop hangs off the edge of her foot. “I mean, that’s good, but you should see them.”</p><p> </p><p>“Yeah,” Peter says.</p><p> </p><p>“You just got so uncomfortable. You don’t want to see them, you fibber.”</p><p> </p><p>“I want to see them!” Peter protests. He feels like he’s waving in the wind today. His lips are all heavy and awkward. “It just… I don’t know.”</p><p> </p><p>“Does it sound super weird for them to come here to see you?”</p><p> </p><p>Peter thinks on that. “Maybe.”</p><p> </p><p>Katie nods. “I think you’re subconsciously trying to keep them out of this new safe space you have.”</p><p> </p><p>“Oh,” says Peter. Katie is very good at figuring out what Peter is feeling.</p><p> </p><p>“Are you dissociating because you don’t want to have this conversation?” Katie says incredulously.</p><p> </p><p>“Uh,” says Peter. He squirms lower in his seat. “Yeah.”</p><p> </p><p>She prods him with a toe. “Alright. I’m gonna talk, then, and you can listen if you want.”</p><p> </p><p>“M’kay,” says Peter.</p><p> </p><p>“I think you should take baby steps,” she says. She starts to braid her long, jet-black hair as she talks. “You had your sense of safety completely ripped away from you. You were knocked unconscious and when you woke up you were somewhere else. Not to mention the Blip and the five year sleep we all got to indulge in. I can only imagine how unsafe you must have felt after all of it.” Peter turns to watch her as she braids and talks, pulling his knees to his chest. “Now you have this little nook in the wilderness and you’re totally safe, totally removed, and the idea of bringing anyone from the outside into this space sounds wrong. It might make it less safe, right? Right. But you trust these people, Peter. The way you talk about them all, it’s like they’re your whole world. And that’s cool. Just think for a second. When you picture any of them, do you feel unsafe?”</p><p> </p><p>She stays quiet for a moment, save for the rustle of her hair and the cicadas hissing around them. </p><p> </p><p>“No,” Peter says, even though he knows he didn’t have to answer.</p><p> </p><p>She turns to peek at him and winks. “Good.” She ties off her braid. “Hey, you can also go visit them at Tony’s, if that feels better. Do you feel safer leaving your place to see them or bringing them here?”</p><p> </p><p>“Well,” Peter says. He tries to find good words. He finds, “Both.”</p><p> </p><p>“Did I put it in perspective for you?”</p><p> </p><p>Peter hums the affirmative. </p><p> </p><p>“Good,” she says. “Look at that, you can see reason. You just need some help getting there, huh, kid?”</p><p> </p><p>“You’re, like, three years older than me,” Peter says, feeling his brow scrunch. “Don’t call me kid.”</p><p> </p><p>“I’m twenty-nine, you doofus,” Katie says with a loud laugh.</p><p> </p><p>Peter sits straighter. “You look so young, though!”</p><p> </p><p>“The Onondaga people age gracefully,” Katie says, flipping her braid around.</p><p> </p><p>The session ends like most of them do—Katie takes a peach from their counter and squeezes Peter’s shoulder and tells him, <em> “Au demain,” </em> then corrects herself to <em> “au deux-main,” </em> now that they’re scheduled every other day.</p><p> </p><p>Peter waves as she drives away. </p><p> </p><p>Then he goes and lies on the padded pillow of his bay window until he falls asleep in the warmth there.</p><p> </p><p>➴➵➶➴➵➶➴➵➶➴➵➶➴➵➶</p><p> </p><p>He dreams of drowning with his head in a trough, someone pushing down on the back of his neck. </p><p> </p><p>When he pulls his head free, it’s Tony’s arm attached to the hand. </p><p> </p><p>His eyes are pure red, melted metal, as he looks down his nose at Peter, scowling. Peter screams himself raw.</p><p> </p><p>Natasha shakes him awake and sits with him until he can breathe and long after that as well, his head on her shoulder, her fingers weaving through his hair to the thump of her heart—a waltz that seeps into her veins and hums in her every delicate footstep. Peter finds solace in its quiet song.</p><p> </p><p>➴➵➶➴➵➶➴➵➶➴➵➶➴➵➶</p><p> </p><p>Peter becomes aware that Bucky had, at some point, acquired an anthology of post-war New York poetry. All queer, all men. Peter sees him carrying it around, walking and reading at once, never stumbling, mouthing along to it. But he doesn’t really get it—get that these poems are everything to Bucky, that Bucky sees himself in these words written during his big sleep, that Bucky must love someone an awful fucking lot to find them lingering upon every page—until he knocks on his and Sam’s doors while searching to borrow Bucky’s fancy hair dryer with the diffuser on the end and receives no answer. Immediately overcome with the fear that their corpses are lying tucked into their sheets spilling blood out of their ears onto their silk pillowcases, he pushes his way into the room. Sam’s half is military neat. Bucky’s half is a juxtaposition of a perfectly made bed and neatly organized desk and neatly folded clothing ready to be put away with walls covered in a hodgepodge of science fiction movie posters and what Peter sees upon closer inspection to be handwritten transcriptions of lines from the poems, authors and titles and page numbers cited, most of them with <em> Steve </em> written next to them in Bucky’s best, careful script. Steve everywhere. <em> Sharing a coke with </em> Steve. Kenneth Koch’s <em> Marina </em> edited to be about Steve. <em> Why I am not a Painter </em> with its own little footnote: <em> Why Steve Is a Painter.  </em></p><p> </p><p>Peter feels unsettled. </p><p> </p><p>He knows they love each other, Bucky and Steve, but this makes him worry. Maybe it’s—verging on unhealthy, the way they cling to each other, the cornerstone of each other’s lives, do they even know how to be without the other? Or will the buildings of their bodies tumble down without the foundation of the other steady and stoic beneath them? </p><p> </p><p>Peter thinks this quarantine, this separation, is good for them. Good for Bucky, at least; he can’t speak for Rogers. But if Peter has learned anything since Germany all those years ago, it’s that Rogers fucking adores Bucky, that Bucky is the fiber knit into the canvas of Rogers’s back, the marble of his arms, the corn silk of his hair, the depths of ocean in his eyes. Rogers tried to drown himself thinking he’d never dip into those particular pools again. </p><p> </p><p>Peter doesn’t know if he gets it. He loves MJ. He doesn’t get it. He thinks he’s glad he doesn’t. The idea of it scares him. It’s a precipice and Peter has become too adept at tumbling, free fall, the wind whipping through a pair of coattails on a balcony overlooking a city silhouette. </p><p> </p><p>He’s already messed up enough. He doesn’t think he would be able to deal with something like <em> this </em> on top of it.</p><p> </p><p>Peter finds himself on the porch, sitting with his legs between the banister bars, dangling over the edge. He wiggles his toes to feel the wind blow between them. He brings the bottle of Stark Brand super-duper-metabolism vodka to his lips and takes a hearty sip. </p><p> </p><p>He leaves his mouth open when it’s down, hoping the fumes will dissipate, drift off on the wind, because that’s always the worst part of drinking: the smell of rubbing alcohol and fermented rye. His other hand drifts into the bag of vegan cheese puffs in his lap and he snarfs three down as a chaser in one go, the way Morgan eats fries, like taking a big bite out of the top of a bouquet. May had mailed them last week, among other things. They had been so confused and wary of the package that they’d left it sitting outside for a full day, all of them watching it out the windows, until May mentioned it on her call that night and said, <em> Oh! It’s full of snacks! Surprise! </em> Surprise, indeed.</p><p> </p><p>“Did anyone teach you to chew with your mouth closed?” comes a voice, tearing Peter’s reverie.</p><p> </p><p>“Nope,” Peter says. “May thinks table manners are for pussies.”</p><p> </p><p>“Sounds about right.” Natasha folds her legs as she sits next to Peter. She holds out grabby hands for the bottle. Peter passes it over. She takes a swig, stops, then takes another sip, rolling it through her mouth before swallowing with a puff of breath. Her constitution is iron-clad. She could drink him under the table three times, probably. “Fuck a table manner.”</p><p> </p><p>“Fuck ‘em,” Peter agrees, taking the bottle back and guzzling more down. He keeps his eyes locked carefully upon the far horizon—the sloped, furry edge of the hills and pastel green grass against the clear sky. Everything is in sharp focus. He wants that to stop. Another sip.</p><p> </p><p>“What’s got you drinking the hard stuff at—one twenty-three in the afternoon?” Natasha asks with a glance at her watch. </p><p> </p><p>“Do I need a reason?” Peter says.</p><p> </p><p>Sam rounds a bend on the running track and starts back up towards the house. Peter watches him kick up dirt. Stares at the cloud of it around Sam’s heels. He remembers when he was <em> that. </em> The stuff that clings to the underside of boots and gets stuck in bathing suit trunks while taking a dip in the reservoir and gets swept under carpets and ignored. Is it really his fault that, sometimes, he still feels that way?</p><p> </p><p>Sam stops in front of the bottom porch step, fists on his hips, huffing. He squints in the midday sunlight, bright and brash even in the lingering breezes of late-May, and says, “You all liquored up already? Didn’t even make me a mimosa or something?”</p><p> </p><p>Peter wordlessly holds the bottle out. A peace offering, because usually Sam would rib him about drinking a Capri Sun instead. Maybe Sam finally sees him as an adult. Or, more likely, Peter looks just as much as he feels like he needs the booze. </p><p> </p><p>Natasha takes the bottle, giving Peter a look like he’s an idiot. “This is the miracle vodka,” she reminds him. “Sam croaks after two shots of this.”</p><p> </p><p>“Oh,” says Peter. “Right. Sorry, Sam.” Then, “Hey, then how come you can handle it? If you’re not enhanced?”</p><p> </p><p>“I never said I wasn’t,” she says evenly.</p><p> </p><p>“Woah, woah, woah,” says Peter. He takes the bottle back and drinks. “Cheers to learning new things about your friends,” he says with forced, bitter jubilance, screwing up his face in a horrible wince and then shaking himself out. </p><p> </p><p>“What are we learning about who?” comes Bucky’s voice from behind them. Peter peers over his shoulder and watches Bucky settle with a grunt onto the porch swing. He’s wearing a pair of shorts made of cut-off sweatpants and an enormous sweatshirt that reads <em> kinda sweet, kinda savage </em> in white comic sans. His feet are bare and his hair messy, taking curl in the humidity. Peter would never look at Bucky and foretell the absolute mania upon his wall in thick, black ink.</p><p> </p><p>“Natasha maybe is enhanced,” Peter says as Sam comes slowly up the stairs, sitting himself on the top one, to the left of Natasha. </p><p> </p><p>“Natasha definitely is enhanced,” says Bucky. “You think regular humans could just do—” he gestures, “that?” </p><p> </p><p>“If anyone could, it would be her,” Sam says.</p><p> </p><p>“I’m touched,” Natasha says, scooting away from Sam. Sam does not flirt with Natasha, but Natasha plays this game where she pretends with her whole heart that he does, and avoids him thusly. </p><p> </p><p>“This is bullshit,” Peter announces. He drinks heartily. His constitution is not at all iron-clad. His constitution is made, perhaps, of tissue paper and the fluffy stuff inside Baby Ruth bars. This Tony vodka is very, very vodka. “Bullshit, I say.” Something in his chest is rock fucking solid.</p><p> </p><p>“What exactly do you say is bullshit?” says Sam.</p><p> </p><p>“Why’d the universe fuck us so hard?” Peter says. He brandishes the bottle. It’s a good thing he drank so much, or it would be sloshing all over him. “Satan’s veiny cock, right up our asses. An orgy of epic proportions, except none of us get to enjoy it, and he’s just sitting back and chuckling, fuck <em> you, </em>Satan, you butt-raping shithead.”</p><p> </p><p>Bucky gestures for the bottle of vodka and Natasha takes it from Peter, drinks, and then hands it off. </p><p> </p><p>“It is sorta bullshit,” Natasha allows.</p><p> </p><p>“Big bullshit,” Sam says.</p><p> </p><p>“Bullshit up the wazoo,” says Bucky once he surfaces straight-faced from the bottle.</p><p> </p><p>“We should get matching tattoos,” Peter says angrily. </p><p> </p><p>Sam gives him a look that thoroughly injects the fear of G-d right into his veins as Natasha and Bucky grow smiles like the jolly yellow sun peering over the horizon. </p><p> </p><p>“Later,” Natasha promises. She runs a hand over her bicep, and Peter thinks, softening, that it is <em> enormous </em> that she would agree to permanently marking her skin, something hers, something <em> theirs, </em> something she can’t remove by bleaching her hair to blond or rubbing it with shea butter or whatever. </p><p> </p><p>Peter loops an arm around her neck and kisses her cheek. She hardly even stiffens before she leans into it.</p><p> </p><p>They sit and let the sun bake them until the buzz wears off. </p><p> </p><p>➴➵➶➴➵➶➴➵➶➴➵➶➴➵➶</p><p> </p><p>It becomes their spot. Not always mid-afternoon—usually at night, watching the moon bob over the horizon like a fat marshmallow and the stars begin to swirl into place around it. </p><p> </p><p>“But we could, like,” says Bucky, snapping his fingers. “Go to a movie, now, or something. We watch movies at home. And we do the farmer’s market, right? That’s people and noise. What’s more people and noise?”</p><p> </p><p>“Plus dark?” says Natasha.</p><p> </p><p>“Plus possible gunshots or passively mentioned triggers?” says Sam.</p><p> </p><p>“Exactly. A movie in public is a whole different… gefilte of fish,” says Peter. He rings his hands around the neck of the super-vodka.</p><p> </p><p>Bucky says, “Don’t use the words <em> gefilte </em> and <em> fish </em> in the same sentence in our house, I’m begging you.”</p><p> </p><p>“You don’t like it?” Peter asks, heart leaping at the thought of <em> our house. </em> </p><p> </p><p>“You <em> do? </em> You’re telling me there are people out there in the universe somewhere, alive, with full use of their fuckin’ tastebuds, that enjoy gefilte fish?”</p><p> </p><p>“With lots of black pepper and some salt? Jus’ tastes like tuna or something. Makes me nostalgic for Passovers past.”</p><p> </p><p>“Oh,” Bucky says, “your uncle didn’t make it with sugar.”</p><p> </p><p>“With sugar,” Peter repeats.</p><p> </p><p>“Yup,” Bucky says. He then shakes his head like a dog shooing flies and takes a big gulp of super-vodka before the bottle makes another round. “My ma was Romaniote, with a Roma pa and a Polish Jew for a ma. She sorta,” Bucky waves his hand noncommittally, “ignored the Roma half, though, because being both was nothing short of suicide and her pa died in the Great War, anyway. It was easy to pretend it… didn’t exist.”</p><p> </p><p>“I like when you talk about your past,” Peter says. He presses the heel of his free hand firmly into his forehead for some reason. “I like getting to know ‘bout you. The history books didn’t know shit. You’re much cooler…. You’re cooler—um, than the books say.”</p><p> </p><p>Bucky reaches out and slips the neck of the bottle from between Peter’s fingers. He doesn’t have the mental wherewithal to complain.</p><p> </p><p>“Thanks,” Bucky says softly, and he looks at all three of the rest of them in turn. “Don’t mind talking about it with you guys, really.” A moment. “Don’t mind talking with you guys at all.”</p><p> </p><p>➴➵➶➴➵➶➴➵➶➴➵➶➴➵➶</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>When Peter perches on the roof at sometime past three with the intention of—he doesn’t know—not hurling himself off, but maybe, like, taking a leap into an adjacent tree and squirrelling around for a few hours under the watchful eye of Orion, he finds himself peculiarly not alone. </p><p> </p><p>“Hi,” says Natasha, buried in an enormous green sweater that makes her look like Oscar the Grouch.</p><p> </p><p>“Hi,” Peter says. He’s got a book in his hands and it feels heavy. He doesn’t even remember which one he had grabbed.</p><p> </p><p>Natasha sees it. “Summer reading?” she asks.</p><p> </p><p>“Nah,” says Peter. “Trying to bore myself to sleep.”</p><p> </p><p>“Did you even finish your semester before—this?” says Natasha.</p><p> </p><p>“Yeah,” Peter says. “We finished the first week of May, thank G-d. I’m already on track to graduate <em> summa cum barely </em> so… yeah. Didn’t need any other setbacks.”</p><p> </p><p>Peter’s hand finds Natasha’s in the dark and they cling to each other. He can feel her pulse in her fingertips, pressed against his knuckles. Her hands are little. Callused, but still dainty. Peter thinks that’s a good summary of her. She has every excuse for her scars to have hardened over, yet she <em> feels, </em>near constantly, near everything. She’s excellent at what she does, but Peter always wonders if she was meant to be someone else. </p><p> </p><p>➴➵➶➴➵➶➴➵➶➴➵➶➴➵➶</p><p> </p><p>Peter wakes up graciously, quietly on Saturday and realizes his next meeting with Katie is that afternoon, but he hasn’t asked Tony to come over yet.</p><p> </p><p>“Shit,” he says. Katie is going to kick his ass and, worst of all, he deserves it. </p><p> </p><p>He grabs his Kermit phone and patters his fingers along the stupid plastic keys. </p><p> </p><p>
  <em> “This is Holly’s Whore House, you’ve got the heroine, we’ve got the long-legged ladies, Jeremy speaking.” </em>
</p><p> </p><p>Peter laughs out loud. “You suck,” he says. “I just woke up, what a—terrible image.”</p><p> </p><p><em> “Hey,” </em> Tony says, his voice positively thick with fondness. <em> “S’good to hear your voice, buddy. You sleep okay?” </em></p><p> </p><p>“Yeah,” Peter says. “Yeah, yeah, actually, it’s been, um, easier recently.”</p><p> </p><p><em> “I’m so fucking glad to hear that,” </em> Tony says. <em> “Oh, sh—your sister is trying to climb me right now, practically pulling my pants down, do you want to say hi to Petey really quick?” </em></p><p> </p><p>Peter’s heart trips at the nickname. He had almost forgotten what it sounds like out of Tony’s mouth, so dissimilar to the haughty, sharp tone that repeats it in his dreams. </p><p> </p><p><em> “Hi Pete it’s me I miss you I hope you are okay in the woods,” </em> says Morgan. <em> “I found five cool rocks yesterday and I put googly eyes on one because it is my rock pet now and I named him Paul like Paul Stanley from KISS.” </em></p><p> </p><p>“Hi, Momo,” he says, rather than addressing any of that. “I miss you, tater tot.”</p><p> </p><p><em> “Can you come over and sneak me some juice pops?” </em> Morgan says. <em> “Daddy had to conviscate them ‘cuz I ate too many.” </em></p><p> </p><p>“Confiscate?” Peter deduces. “Yikes, Mo. I can’t give you more juice pops if Dad says no. Wink wink.”</p><p> </p><p><em> “Wink wink!” </em> Morgan hollers. <em> “That means yes!” </em></p><p> </p><p>“It’s not so secret if you yell about it,” Peter says, endlessly amused by her.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> “Oh, right.” </em>
</p><p> </p><p>Tony’s voice breaks in then. <em> “Hey, give your brother back to me, squirt. You’re hogging him. Oh, Jesus, Morgan, go brush your teeth, you smell like the sewer.” </em></p><p> </p><p><em> “Bye, Pete!” </em> Morgan yells into the phone.</p><p> </p><p>“Bye, stinky, love you,” he says. Then, “Does she get crazier as she gets older?”</p><p> </p><p><em> “It’s always a new variety of crazy,” </em> Tony mumbles. <em> “Every day, a new insanity. It’s a good thing I adore her or I’d leave her on the side of the road for the coyotes.” </em></p><p> </p><p>“I would be so mad at you if you did.”</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> “That’s the one reason I won’t.” </em>
</p><p> </p><p>“Thank goodness,” Peter says. He clears his throat a little, shifting on the sheets, feeling quite suddenly awful.</p><p> </p><p><em> “What’s up?” </em> Tony says. <em> “I can hear you moping from all the way over here.” </em></p><p> </p><p>“It’s just, I—I really, um. I really just." Peter takes a breath and huffs it out frustratedly before saying, "Tony, I miss you.”</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> “Oh, buddy.” </em>
</p><p> </p><p>“I know we talk on the phone a lot, but. Um, can you. Can you visit?”</p><p> </p><p>“Yes,<em> yeah, of course I can—</em> <em>visit, I’ll—</em> <em>when? Any time? You tell me?” </em></p><p> </p><p>“Now?” Peter says, fast.</p><p> </p><p><em> “I’ll be there in twenty,” </em> Tony says. <em> “Love you so much, buddy.” </em></p><p> </p><p>“Love you,” Peter whispers, then hangs up.</p><p> </p><p>He leaps into the shower and feels bad about breaking his schedule this morning, but gets over it because Tony is coming now, right now, and he is going to <em> be here </em> right in front of Peter, real and alive. And that’s amazing.</p><p> </p><p>“Tony is coming!” Peter yells, running through the hallways and pulling a shirt on so he looks slightly put together, wet curls dangling in front of his eyes and his socks skidding on the hardwood. “Tony is coming, put on pants, put on pants now, he’s coming.”</p><p> </p><p>“Should I make him a pancake?” Bucky says, spatula in his hand and apron tied at his waist. He has no shirt on underneath it. He hasn’t put his metal arm back on since they went to the market that first time, and Peter thinks it suits him. He looks so much lighter, more relaxed.</p><p> </p><p>“Make him three,” says Peter, grabbing four strips of turkey bacon, stacking them, and ripping a bite off the ends. </p><p> </p><p>The doorbell rings.</p><p> </p><p>“Ahh,” says Peter, mouth full. </p><p> </p><p>“Holy shit, chill,” says Bucky. “It’s just Tony.”</p><p> </p><p>“Ahhhh,” Peter repeats emphatically. He puts his bacon on the counter on a piece of paper towel and washes his hands aggressively, heart pounding.</p><p> </p><p>He goes to open the door. Tony stands there with his arms crossed over his chest, fingers tucked in his armpits, hair standing up all stupid and crazy, wearing a flannel shirt and shorts made of cut-off sweatpants, and Peter smiles so immediately and so wide that it closes his eyes with its force. </p><p> </p><p>He barrels into Tony’s chest and wraps his arms round Tony’s waist as tightly as he can manage. “Hi,” he says, “hi, hi, Tony.”</p><p> </p><p>“Hey, <em> piccolino,” </em> Tony says, pressing his cheek to the top of Peter’s head and valiantly refraining from complaining about the tightness of the hug. </p><p> </p><p>“I missed you,” says Peter.</p><p> </p><p>“I miss you too,” Tony says, quietly.</p><p> </p><p>Peter pulls away enough to look at Tony’s face, taking it all in. His round, brown glasses askew. His beard all peppered with grey. That same smile. </p><p> </p><p>“Hey!” Peter realizes. “I didn’t even think to check if it was you!”</p><p> </p><p>Tony keeps grinning, so soft, so fond.</p><p> </p><p>“Well,” says Peter, because he is a smartass, after all, “I could tell <em> you </em> by your stink from a mile away. If you were an identical triplet, I’d be able to tell which one you are just by—sniffing you once, that’s for sure.”</p><p> </p><p>Tony chucks him under the chin. “You’re an asshole. Let me in your house.”</p><p> </p><p>Peter steps aside and does.</p><p> </p><p>“Nice digs,” Tony says with a whistle. There are throw blankets bunched on the couches from when they watched Wall-E the night before, and there’s an embarrassing number of beer bottles next to the sink, but really Nat is saving those to break and then decorate a mirror with or something, so they’re not just slobs. They’re slobs with a purpose. </p><p> </p><p>“Thanks,” Peter says. “Thank you, actually, like, you built it. So, thank you.”</p><p> </p><p>Tony waves the thanks off. “It’s the least I can do for you, buddy. Hey, is that Barnes? Morning, pal, how’re you holding up?”</p><p> </p><p>Bucky waves his spatula. “I’m making you three pancakes and you’re gonna eat ‘em.”</p><p> </p><p>“Oh,” says Tony. “A treat. Thanks, I guess.”</p><p> </p><p>Peter grins a little, shaking out his shoulders. Katie was right. Tony actually being here isn’t nearly as weird as he feared it would be.</p><p> </p><p>In fact, it settles some loose piece in his chest, presses it down and then pats it fondly.</p><p> </p><p>Peter feels, now, as if he’s getting somewhere.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>i KNOW i just posted yesterday i know but i'm just so EXCITED to get this UP!!! especially the next chapter because a new CHARACTER comes in and i LOVE this character!!!!!!!!! </p><p>did you all watch kimmel when tom was like "yeah lowkey i drink too much!" ?? bc that ended up relating to this chapter so TADA i couldn't <em>not</em>post this today whoops</p><p>i hope you all are happy and healthy and safe!!! &lt;33</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0006"><h2>6. like a virgin (not)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>When MJ knocks on the door, Peter hunches under the weight of his nausea. </p><p>“Aw, man,” he says. </p><p>Natasha in the living room, who likes MJ very much, says, “Let her in! Let her in!”</p><p>Peter says, “Oh my G-d.”</p><p>“Do you need me to open the door?” Natasha says, practically bouncing on the couch.</p><p>“No,” says Peter, because that sounds bad, “no, I’ll— hnghr.”</p><p>He takes a deep breath. Grabs the doorknob, twists it. Opens the door.</p><p>She’s standing there, shrouded in light, angelic and awkward and MJ. Her skin is darker from the West Coast sun, her hair lighter with short, curly bangs chopped across her forehead. She has a duffel bag in hand and a beautiful, sheepish smile on her lips and she’s wearing those camo pants he likes so much and he—</p><p>Freezes.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>peter &amp; mj get like vaguely distantly saucy in this so feel free to start skipping from <em>“Em,” he says. “Sweetheart,” his voice cracks, “MJ.”</em> UNTIL <em>“Something is bothering you,” she says, after, laying shoulder to shoulder with him.</em></p><p>it's not explicit no fear children</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The weeks continue to pass in similar form. The dog park, the Farmer’s Market, therapy, movie nights, liquoring up (but with increased limitations via Sam. He’ll never really grow out of his counselor pants, even when he’s indubiously the one who should be getting counseled. Nonetheless, if Sam wasn’t there to stop them, Peter is nervous he, Bucky, and Nat would be bonafide alcoholics within a matter of weeks, so he’s grateful.). Tony and Pepper and Morgan visit, May visits for the first time with Happy and, after that, without him. The second time, she changes Peter’s sheets and vacuums his floor and tries to bake them all cookies and it’s the first time they test their fire alarm and they’re pleased to know it works just fine, if with excessive enthusiasm, as is the case with most things Tony creates. It takes all five of them to bat away the lingering smoke. </p><p> </p><p>Ned flies all the way out for an afternoon and ends up napping the whole time, unused to the East Coast time difference, but Peter doesn’t mind a bit—keeps one hand cuffed around Ned’s wrist, counts his pulse, and feels a calm he hasn’t felt since high school. Ned still smells the same, and smiles with the same crinkles at the corners of his button-black eyes and the same upwards tilt to his chin so that he can keep his gaze locked on Peter’s, leading him through their mirth. They chew on the peach rings Ned brings and Peter feels nostalgic for the chunks of sugar that wedge between his teeth, for the hours they spent clicking Legos into place and playing through video games and flipping flashcards for Academic Decathlon. Having Ned around makes him feel so safe it’s almost appalling. He loves him so much. He hugs him far too long before he leaves.</p><p> </p><p>One time Rhodey comes and all five of them play Mario Kart for seven hours straight. Clint comes, and he and Natasha hole away somewhere until he goes. (Peter suspects the vents.) Steve stops by once or twice. Occasionally he and Bucky hang out alone, but the lion’s share of his time is spent with all of them, together. Even Peter, which Peter appreciates, because the others are far closer with Steve than Peter has ever been, and Peter would hate to be by himself while they all drink gross craft beer on the porch without him.</p><p> </p><p>July hits and Peter begins to vibrate incessantly because that means MJ is coming home, MJ is coming to <em> stay with him, </em> because Katie says he can handle it and Peter agrees. And Peter is thrilled, so thrilled, because hearing MJ’s voice is brilliant and all but he misses the feeling of her fingertips bumping along the knots of his spine and her lips warm on his jaw and the ballooned shape of those camo pants she wears sometimes. He misses the scent of charcoal clinging to her after a long art binge, and he misses hearing Bratmobile yell through her headphones, and he misses sitting on the fire escape and sharing a blunt after sex because they’re too modern to smoke a cigarette like in the old films but MJ likes the aesthetic of it.</p><p> </p><p>He misses the way she pees with the door open and the mismatched socks she leaves all around the house when she gets too hot and yanks them off and the designs she practices painting on Peter’s toenails. He misses her Russian Literature on his nightstand. He misses everything about her. </p><p> </p><p>Katie keeps laughing at him the closer they get to MJ’s arrival. “You really love this girl, don’t you?”</p><p><br/>
“So much,” Peter says emphatically, waving his arms. “I love her so much. I could spend every minute of my life with her and never complain, even though we don’t do that because our relationship is healthy and we know the value of personal space.”</p><p> </p><p>“Good for you,” Katie says. “How long is she staying? The rest of the summer?”</p><p> </p><p>“Nah,” Peter says, “just a week, for now. She’s taking online classes, so. She needs to not be living with me.”</p><p> </p><p>“You sound upset,” Katie observes.</p><p> </p><p>“No,” Peter protests. “Well, okay, maybe a little. I just, like, miss her a lot, you know? And I know the reason she doesn’t want to live with me while she works is because I’ll distract her, I’m self-aware enough to know that, but it’s been <em> so long </em> and it kinda feels like she doesn’t want to see me as much as I want to see her.”</p><p> </p><p>“You should tell her you feel that way,” says Katie.</p><p> </p><p>Peter winces. He tucks his knees to his chest and pulls on the too-long toes of his socks. “It’s just me overthinking, though. Like, why should I bother her with it if it’s only affecting me?”</p><p> </p><p>“Because if it affects you for too long, even if you know it’s not true, it’ll start to affect your relationship,” Katie says. “Even if you don’t realize it. Tension is sneaky that way.”</p><p> </p><p>“Hm,” says Peter. “Well, I’ll think about it.”</p><p> </p><p>“That’s all I can ask you to do,” says Katie breezily. She lays flat backwards on the porch and lets the wind blow over her. “I’m really just here to give you advice. It’s up to you whether you follow it or not.”</p><p> </p><p>“I know,” Peter says. “I usually do, by the way.”</p><p> </p><p>Katie smiles, her eyes closed. “I know,” she says. “That’s why you’ve been getting better.”</p><p> </p><p>➴➵➶➴➵➶➴➵➶➴➵➶➴➵➶</p><p> </p><p>The day before MJ comes, Peter bustles around the house like a Windex-scented tornado, stress-cleaning everything in sight. He’s stowing throw blankets in the drawers of the coffee table and in the wicker baskets around the living room, and he’s dusted the television set three times over. Every single dish and cup in the house is shining, and they’re stocked to the gills with all the Farmer’s Market’s freshest and finest: jewel-like strawberries and long celery stalks and carrots that look like something out of a cartoon.</p><p> </p><p>He cleans the windows. He changes his sheets. He shakes out all of the pillows. </p><p> </p><p>His excitement is there, but it’s tinged with something that turns his stomach. He thinks it’s dread. The same sort that painted him green before Tony came that first time.</p><p> </p><p>When MJ knocks on the door, Peter hunches under the weight of his nausea. </p><p> </p><p>“Aw, man,” he says. </p><p> </p><p>Natasha in the living room, who likes MJ very much, says, “Let her in! Let her in!”</p><p> </p><p>Peter says, “Oh my G-d.”</p><p> </p><p>“Do you need me to open the door?” Natasha says, practically bouncing on the couch.</p><p> </p><p>“No,” says Peter, because that sounds bad, “no, I’ll—hnghr.”</p><p> </p><p>He takes a deep breath. Grabs the doorknob, twists it. Opens the door.</p><p> </p><p>She’s standing there, shrouded in light, angelic and awkward and MJ. Her skin is darker from the West Coast sun, her hair lighter with short, curly bangs chopped across her forehead. She has a duffel bag in hand and a beautiful, sheepish smile on her lips and she’s wearing those camo pants he likes so much and he—</p><p> </p><p>Freezes. </p><p> </p><p>He opens his mouth to talk and then it falls closed. His heart begins to patter with such intensity it hurts, this feels like electrodes on his temples and everyone he loves falling limp to the ground around him, and he claps a hand over his mouth before he can help it, stumbling steps backwards as MJ’s brows knit and her lips part.</p><p> </p><p>“Oh,” says MJ.</p><p> </p><p>“Peter,” says Natasha without moving. “Peter, look at me.”</p><p> </p><p>He does, gasping warm breaths onto his palm. He doesn’t know why. This didn’t happen with Tony. </p><p> </p><p>“This is real,” she says. “This morning Sam spilled oatmeal all over the floor and you threw a fit because you wanted everything perfect for when MJ got here. You listened to <em> Girls Just Wanna Have Fun </em> for an hour on loop while you were getting ready.”</p><p> </p><p>Peter is cracking right down the middle, ribs laying around him on the floor. MJ still hasn’t come inside.</p><p> </p><p>“MJ,” Natasha calls. “Tell him something only you know about him, a memory with just the two of you. It should help.”</p><p> </p><p>MJ blinks fast, her lashes fluttering, and she says, “Um. Okay, uh. Peter, for our first date you brought me to see the fifth Indiana Jones movie and during the end credits you said it had a distinct lack of Short Round Energy.”</p><p> </p><p>Peter looks up, meeting her eyes. The same russet brown they’ve always been.</p><p> </p><p>She grins with half her mouth. “Your favorite color is orange, and no one in their right mind would choose orange to be their favorite color. You say it’s because you like how clementines smell on your fingers even hours after you peeled them. You sometimes forget to drive with only your right foot and leave your left foot on the brake pedal. You—you make your mac and cheese with too much butter,” she is tearing up and Peter feels awful, “and you never roll up your sleeves because you think your wrists are weirdly skinny, which they are, but it doesn’t matter because I still like them,” Peter is starting towards her, one hand still over his mouth, his other straight out, awaiting her warmth, “and your playlists make no sense,” he crushes her against his chest, “and you never read anything I recommend to you even when you say you will,” Peter presses his nose into her hair and his hand falls from his mouth to cup the back of her neck. Peter hears Natasha leave the room.</p><p> </p><p>“I’m so sorry,” he says thickly, certain MJ can feel his heart heaving and smacking and stuttering against her chest. “I know, I know it’s you, of course, but—”</p><p> </p><p>“It’s okay,” she whispers. “You don’t need to explain it to me.”</p><p> </p><p>“Sorry this wasn’t the cool, sexy moment of reuniting every problematic Hallmark movie promises,” Peter says.</p><p> </p><p>“When have I ever cared about a Hallmark movie? Hallmark and their capitalist agenda can kiss my ass.” MJ pulls back enough to look at him, raising one of her hands to brush her thumb over his cheekbone. He closes and eyes and leans into it, an embarrassing keen ripping straight out of his chest. </p><p> </p><p>“Oh, Pete,” she breathes, and before Peter can even process it, her lips are closing around his, warm and soft and full. He could <em> cry. </em>It’s like drinking straight maple syrup and stickying his whole throat with it, like dipping his hands into the Styx and finding them immortal, indomitable, and he runs his palms up her waist and back down, just feeling her. He breathes too heavily through his nose, he’s out of practice, but she doesn’t seem to mind, nipping his lip before pulling away, her soft breath washing over his chin. </p><p> </p><p>He waits with his eyes closed, basking. A tear seeps out unbidden, slowly carving its way over the curve of his cheekbone. </p><p> </p><p>When it slows by the corner of his mouth, she kisses it away. He opens his eyes. </p><p> </p><p>She stares at him and he stares back and it feels like homecoming.</p><p> </p><p>“MJ,” he says. “Em. Jesus Christ.”</p><p> </p><p>“Yeah,” she says, smiling in disbelief.</p><p> </p><p>“I love you so much. Wow, you’re really—you’re here. Hi, MJ. You’re so beautiful and I love you.”</p><p> </p><p>Her lips curve, her cheeks going dark. All these years and she still blushes every time he compliments her. He aches, he aches, he aches. </p><p> </p><p>“Are you going to show me around?” she says.</p><p> </p><p>Peter plummets back to Earth. He spends a moment feeling petulant about it, because he would be quite content to just stare at her on another plane for a little while longer, but then he grumbles, “Yeah, okay,” and when she laughs at him, loud and free, he grins and thinks <em> geloybt gat. </em></p><p> </p><p>She likes their clean, white kitchen and their dark floorboards. She thinks they have too many video games, but then he reminds her they don’t have cell phones and she says, “Oh, shit, okay, that’s fair.” Peter traces the outline of her phone in her pocket. It’s weird, seeing it, after all this time. It would feel unfamiliar and unwieldy in his palm, he assures himself. </p><p> </p><p>He points out the bathroom and the handmade market soap he bought for her to use because she likes shea butter. She socks him on the shoulder.</p><p> </p><p>They get to his bedroom last, and standing in the doorway of it feels tense. Almost scary. </p><p> </p><p>His bedding is pulled tight, white pillows and white comforter and white sheets. The sun tosses bright light onto it, and the room is warm from the open window. His desk is neat, his books stacked, his camera sitting beside his cup of sharpened pencils. </p><p> </p><p>Peter places her duffel bag on the floor outside his closet and then turns towards her, letting his palms clap down onto his thighs. “That’s the digs,” he says.</p><p> </p><p>MJ is looking at him strangely, a blackberry blush on her cheeks, her stare intense. Her hands are knit, her fingers pulling at each other. </p><p> </p><p>“Peter,” she says. </p><p> </p><p>He understands immediately, feeling a flush pour over his ears, across his cheeks, hot and weighty. The pit of his stomach grows warm and begins to yearn.</p><p> </p><p>“Em,” he says. “Sweetheart,” his voice cracks, “MJ.”</p><p> </p><p>“Yeah,” she says. </p><p> </p><p>She crosses to him, the air alight and electric, and her fingertips catch the rumpled front of his t-shirt, hiking it. She pushes it up. </p><p> </p><p>He raises his arms, staring at her wide-eyed as she pulls it off. Her hands are quick, impulsive, thumbs falling into the dips at the edges of his abdomen, her pointer fingers sweeping over his sides, and she runs her palms up, over his pecs, to his shoulders and across, down his biceps, land loose around his wrists. He’s aflame. </p><p> </p><p>“Fuck,” she says softly, just touching, just barely, like she’s afraid to leave fingerprints behind. “It’s a really good thing you don’t know what you look like.”</p><p> </p><p>“I—own a mirror.”</p><p> </p><p>“And yet you have no self-esteem,” she says, one hand settling firmly on his lower back, the other wrapping around the sharp angle of his hipbone, “which is ridiculous to me, always, fucking <em> look </em> at you,” and then presses them together, hard. </p><p> </p><p>Peter lets out an aborted groan-gasp thing that nearly has him choking on his tongue. He manages not to, which is a feat he thinks he really ought to be proud of.</p><p> </p><p>“Look at you,” she repeats, a hand rising to cup the back of Peter’s neck tenderly, her eyes intense and framed by impossible lashes, feathery and damp and she glows. Peter’s going to pass out or something.</p><p> </p><p>She takes Peter’s hands and leads them to the hem of her own shirt. He is careful in pulling it over her head, trying not to rip it in haste, shifting the puff of her hair out of the way, and he watches it settle back into place over her shoulders. Her chest is bare, and he meets her eyes, asking permission. </p><p> </p><p>She nods, breathless, and he comes closer, closer, a hand light on the small of her back, a hand on her shoulder, and his mouth finds her collarbones, nips at the hard line of one and slides down, pressing wet, warm kisses as he listens to the hitch of her breath, the stutter of her heart bounding right there, under his lips. From her shoulder his hand slips, and he runs his thumb under her breast, along the graceful curve it makes against her ribcage.</p><p> </p><p>“Put a sock on the door,” MJ says.</p><p> </p><p>“Okay,” he whispers. He looks up to meet her eyes, and he does.</p><p> </p><p>MJ takes him by the elbows, sits him on the edge of the mattress. She takes off those camo fucking pants, removes her underwear one leg at a time. Peter aches for her, her harsh edges and the parts of her that have grown softer over the years. He wants to press kiss after kiss from her eyelids to her knees. He smiles fondly at the new tan lines she bears from her months abroad, the ones that arc around her neck and carve across the line of her hips, like she’s art pop, color block: ochre and the skin of a redwood tree. With eager fingers she inches him out of his clothes and they find their way into bed and a rhythm they could never quite forget. These walls have seen a lot of shadows, have seen Peter stumble and seen him stand back up after with his jaw clenched, but he thinks, somehow, this is the most important thing that has ever happened here: MJ over him, looking down at him with red-rimmed eyes and lips gleaming and Peter running his palms over her thighs again and again and the gentle, quiet creak of the bed in harmony with their gasped, stifled moans. It’s so good.</p><p> </p><p>“Something is bothering you,” she says, after, laying shoulder to shoulder with him.</p><p> </p><p>“Um,” he says, affronted. “I really thought my penis would have made you not, like, think about my mental state for a few minutes.”</p><p> </p><p>“I’m always thinking about your mental state, just in a different compartment of my brain. Stop being a little shit, tell me.”</p><p> </p><p>Peter grumbles unintelligibly for a second before sighing and crossing his hands over his chest. “Just something Beck said, like, back there. And it’s made me think a lot.”</p><p> </p><p>“Fuck that,” she says automatically. Then, “Tell me.”</p><p> </p><p>“Well,” says Peter. He sorta wants to cover his crotch, now. And his face, and his whole body, and hide for the rest of forever. “It’s just, like. Why do you, I don’t know. Put up with all of this, knowing what could happen to you?”</p><p> </p><p>“To me?” MJ says.</p><p> </p><p>“Yeah, if you, I don’t know, if my identity gets out and you get connected with me and bad people, like, take you, kidnap you, adultnap you, or if we’re out together and people try to kill me but you’re there too, you know? Why do you—why do you even stay with me when there’s so much bad stuff that could happen?”</p><p> </p><p>“Because I choose to stay with you,” she says. Her head turns on the pillow towards him, so he turns to her too and tries not to look desperate. “I choose to. On purpose. It’s not just because we’ve been together for a long time, or whatever—it’s because it’s worth it, for me, loving you. I still want to be with you, every day, like, embarrassingly much. All the time, Peter, on purpose.”</p><p> </p><p>“How could it be worth it?” Peter says weakly. </p><p> </p><p>“Are you joking?” she says. “Peter, you’re the best person ever. You’re stubborn and witty and you have those stupid ears and there is no one as caring as you out there. You can be an asshole when you’re pissed, and you only get pissed when you’re scared, and you get scared easily, but it’s okay because you’re not scared of me, and I know how you work. Like, molecularly, right?”</p><p> </p><p>“Uh huh,” Peter says.</p><p> </p><p>“And I know how to handle you, right? Help you and make things better and talk you through whatever knots are up in here?” She taps a knuckle on his temple. </p><p> </p><p>“Yeah,” he says.</p><p> </p><p>“I wrangle you into, like, vague sanity?”</p><p> </p><p>“Yeah.”</p><p> </p><p>“And I like doing it?”</p><p> </p><p>“Um,” he says.</p><p> </p><p>“I do,” she says earnestly, and thumps a hand on his chest. “I do very much, I like being your polar opposite. Pulling you into magnetic balance, right? Yeah. I love you, you dope.”</p><p> </p><p>“I love you,” he says. Everything Katie had pulled out of him, it’s gone, it’s soothed with the balm of <em> this. </em> It is so big that it hurts, it fills him up and he thinks his face is bright red because he’s physically actually on fire and it almost makes him sick, all of this, she could reach right between his soppy ribs and pull his heart out in a terrible handful, and he says, painfully, like he’s limply pasted together at best, “I <em> love </em> you, MJ, I love you. I love you,” and she’s pulling him onto her chest and wrapping her arms around him and they’re touching everywhere, she’s so warm and long and soft and Peter aches, he <em> aches, </em> and he presses kisses to her skin and he tastes sweat and love and he trails down, down, down, over her stomach, over her hips, and he shows her how much he loves her, how much he’ll always protect her, exactly how desperate he is to never let her go.</p><p> </p><p>➴➵➶➴➵➶➴➵➶➴➵➶➴➵➶</p><p> </p><p>After they’ve taken a power nap and showered the sticky sweat off themselves, they go to sit outside on the front porch, where the four of them usually drink themselves silly. </p><p> </p><p>MJ seems to enjoy the heat, if not the humidity, as she rubs some coconut scented cream into her hair. She’s wearing an enormous button down shirt like a dress and Peter is, like, vaguely hard again just looking at it.</p><p> </p><p>He watches her work her curls until she tires, laying flat on the deck. Peter lies beside her.</p><p> </p><p>“The season of schvitz,” he says. </p><p> </p><p>“Hm?” she says, making a visor with her fingers. </p><p> </p><p>“Sweat,” Peter elaborates. </p><p> </p><p>“Ah,” she says. </p><p> </p><p>They schvitz with all their bodily might, but it’s different from a city schvitz. It feels cleaner. More natural. Peter feels better here. He doesn’t want to think about what that means quite yet. </p><p> </p><p>“Oh,” she says eventually, and pulls a neatly packaged blunt out of the pocket of the shirt.</p><p> </p><p>“I love you,” Peter says fervently.</p><p> </p><p>They idly smoke and let the sun keep them warm, laying shoulder to shoulder in their little section of heaven.</p><p> </p><p>Sam and Bucky call them inside eventually, the table set with salad and veggie burgers and some fresh rolls they had grabbed at the Farmer’s Market the day before. MJ sits beside Natasha, across from Peter, and they all eat, idly chatting around mouthfuls. </p><p> </p><p>Natasha meets Peter’s eye early in, silently questioning him.</p><p> </p><p>He twists the corner of his lip wryly.</p><p> </p><p>She gives a vague nod and winks at him.</p><p> </p><p>They move on. </p><p> </p><p>They eat for what seems like ages, stuffing their mouths like they’ve never been fed, chasing it with cold, local hard cider until MJ is visibly crossed. Peter is sure no one else can tell, because MJ isn’t goofy when she’s inebriated, but he walks her to the couches as the boys clean off the table. Natasha grins and strikes up a conversation about the internship, which MJ throws herself into with gusto.</p><p> </p><p>Peter buses dishes from the table. Sam washes, Bucky dries and puts away.</p><p> </p><p>Peter somehow loses his focus watching the muscles of Sam’s back expand and contract. It’s because, he thinks, Sam is using an unusual amount of force to clean the plates. Peter watches from around the corner of the wall, unnoticed, as Sam scrubs, his face blank. He rubs with the bristled brush, runs the plate under the water. Brushes again. Adds more soap. Brushes. Rinses. When Peter thinks he’s about to hand it off to Bucky, he starts scrubbing again.</p><p> </p><p>Peter finds it unsettling. Strangely, he is reminded of the careful chaos on Bucky’s wall. An exact storm, and Sam stands in the eye of it, unaware of the rustling around him. </p><p> </p><p>Scrubs. Rinses. Scrubs. Soap. Scrubs. Rinses.</p><p> </p><p>Finally, he hands the plate to Bucky, who stares at Sam too long, so Peter knows he is not the only one who notices.  </p><p> </p><p>Peter goes to grab the salad bowl off the table.</p><p> </p><p>He guesses they’re all clinging to what they can. </p><p> </p><p>He finishes carting the dirty plates off the dining table and then joins MJ and Natasha on the couches. They’ve put on a nature documentary. Something with starfish.</p><p> </p><p>Peter wedges himself between the two, wraps an arm around each of their shoulders, and plants a kiss atop both of their heads as they nestle against his chest.</p><p> </p><p>Bucky and Sam join them eventually. </p><p> </p><p>This is how they pass the night: calmly, quietly, together.</p><p> </p><p>The two of them mushily make their way into bed. MJ curves herself around Peter’s back, and he sleeps deep and long. When he wakes up and the room is still and bright, he nearly cries in utter relief. They’re too sweaty, they probably smell, the sheets are all tangled around their legs, and Peter rolls on top of MJ and kisses her awake, kisses her as she groans in frustration, kisses her until she kisses back with a happy, soft noise, until their morning breath is too much and they pull away, laughing, their noses wrinkled.</p><p> </p><p>As they shower—MJ with a t-shirt around her hair to keep it dry, Peter massaging her shoulders under the spray—she says, “You should show me around. Let’s go to a waterfall. I want one of those <em> Ithaca is Gorges </em> shirts.”</p><p> </p><p>Peter stops mid-massage, startled. She swats blindly at his thigh until he starts again.</p><p> </p><p>“I, uh,” Peter says. “None of us have been yet.”</p><p> </p><p>“To Ithaca Falls?” MJ says. “Well, this is a great time to have your first time.”</p><p> </p><p>Peter says, “MJ…”</p><p> </p><p>She turns, slipping out of his grip. She loops her hands loosely around his waist and the water pounds on the back of his head. “Pete,” she says softly. “No one knows who you are. And I’ll be right with you, the whole time. I’ll protect you. Promise.”</p><p> </p><p>“I’m more worried about you than me,” he says. “I want you to be safe.”</p><p> </p><p>“I will be,” she says simply. “You have me, sure. But I have <em> you. </em> I couldn’t be any safer than that.”</p><p> </p><p>And Peter, weak-kneed, doesn’t quite know how to respond to <em> that, </em> so he smiles stupidly and kisses her.</p><p> </p><p>They end up choosing Buttermilk Falls as their destination—because MJ’s research says they can swim there and not at all because of its hilarious name—and tell the others where they’re headed. Natasha gives him a subtle thumbs up as they go through the door, decked in athletic leggings and smeared with sunscreen. When Peter sits in the car, he feels something weird in the pocket on his thigh, and he finds his webshooters. </p><p> </p><p>He settles.</p><p> </p><p>They walk along the rough rocks hand-in-hand for balance. Everything is slippery and wet, and the trees hang over their heads like cotton wool and streamers rolled in thick paint. The sun is hot and sharp and Peter feels his shoulders burning within minutes. The air smells like mud and is thick with mist and the shouts of tourists trekking, huffing and panting from exertion. When the falls comes into view, they pause, craning their necks to stare up at it. It’s broad and crooked, stooped with steps of rough cliff-face impeding the water flow. Hyper-green trees grow around it, and they stand on long, thin perches of rock to watch it pour. Their shirts grow damp, and Peter takes his camera, which had been bouncing loose against the bones of his chest, into his hands. He points her to a spot off the rocks, in the pool at the base of the falls. She pulls off her shoes and leggings, leaving her in a maroon one-piece bathing suit that sends Peter’s blood pouring right into his dick. She settles in the water and poses, a little awkward and very MJ, tilting her head, curls dangling into her eyes, skin shining, and Peter snaps picture after picture as she shifts, thinking it’s a strange almost-miracle that she never notices the awe in the eyes that catch on her. Peter wants to punch everyone who stares and tell them <em> I know, right? </em> in equal measure.</p><p> </p><p>She clumsily comes closer, splashing water, and pulls herself out to stand before him, winding her arms around his neck. She grins brilliantly with that one crooked front tooth, and Peter loves her so, so much. </p><p> </p><p>“Hi,” she says breathlessly. </p><p> </p><p>“Hi,” he says. </p><p> </p><p>“Let me get some of you,” she says, taking the camera from around his neck and tapping his ass to get him to move. </p><p> </p><p>He wrinkles his nose but goes, wetting a hand and ruffling his hair with it to try and, like, neaten it, but in an artfully mussed way. He pulls off his shirt and stands where MJ had, doing whatever pose she yells at him to, and he thinks people are watching them still, and his stomach is fucking rolling, but MJ calls, “Hey, I love you,” all soft, and he melts. </p><p> </p><p>Her gaze says <em> no one is looking but me. </em> Peter basks in it.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>MJ THE NEW CHARACTER WAS MJ I LOVE HER THANK GOOOOD </p><p>i know i'm uploading something literally every day but i caNNOT STOP and i am so excited to get the rest of this one up hkjehhrieikjfiwjrlihuerhfrdkdennad</p><p>i wrote a little one shot in the ben lives! verse last night if anyone is curious to check that out, it's <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23818006">here!!</a></p><p>&lt;33 lmk how you're doing, how you're liking everything, if anything fun and good is happening in your lives!</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0007"><h2>7. beat it (the ‘it’ is cookie dough)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>While they’re hiding the steak knives, MJ takes Peter’s wrist in her hand and says, all soft and sweet, “hey.”</p><p>He turns bouncily and smiles at her like a dolt. “Hi,” he says, gooey.</p><p>She rolls her eyes. “I just want to make sure you’re good, ‘cuz you kinda disappeared this morning.”</p><p>“Oh,” he says. “Yeah, yeah, I’m totally cool, all good, so good. I went to work out, is all. Did some dancey stuff.”</p><p>MJ’s expression tells Peter that she knows he’s withholding something. “Okay,” she says.</p><p>“Hey,” Peter says, stepping a little closer. “It’s nothing, okay? I promise. It’s not my story to tell.”</p><p>She relaxes a little, raising her hand to run her knuckles over the stubble Peter has managed to grow along his jaw. “Okay,” she says, “if you say so.”</p><p>He pecks her lips. “I do say so. I say so very much. I also very much say and proclaim that you are, um, the bestest girlfriend in the world and I love you so much but I hear the car so I’m running to get my baby <em>sister—”</em></p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>check end notes for tw in this chapter plz &lt;3</p><p>i know the walmart photo station def can't develop film but imagine bc this is in the ~future~ it actually can okay okay sorry just know im not a dolt</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>When Peter wakes up on day three of MJ’s visit, it is raining. Biblical, forceful rain smattering down upon the rooftop, shaking the languid treetops, turning the yard into a swampy, mucky mess, Moses letting the Red Sea tumble. It shatters the illusion.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Peter suddenly feels the guilt he’s been staving off the past two days for skipping out on his routine. He doubts Katie would be upset at him—in fact, she told him yesterday that it’s fine to stray for now, and leaving MJ to cook with Bucky and Sam for the one hour of his session had strained his conscience enough to make him feel maybe it </span>
  <em>
    <span>is</span>
  </em>
  <span> okay to screw the schedule this once, to spend as much time with her as he can—but he’s upset with himself. It’s his job to do what Katie says, it’s making him </span>
  <em>
    <span>better,</span>
  </em>
  <span> all of it, and he’s been selfish and lazy. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He looks at MJ, skin awash in the grey light from the window, face sharpened with shadow, and thinks she surely won't mind if he goes to do his mandated hour of exercise while she’s still dead to the world. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He slinks out from under the sheets, washes his face, changes into a pair of leggings and a big, loose t-shirt. Natasha’s heartbeat is absent from the main floor, so Peter assumes she is in the basement, at the barre, stretching. Perhaps waiting for him. Maybe she’ll shoot him a sour smile when he bounces down the stairs and catches her eye in the mirrors, beckon him closer and he’ll join her halfway through a </span>
  <em>
    <span>pas de deux. </span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She doesn’t. She’s there, as Peter expected, but everything else is wrong. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>A sharp, minor waltz is playing loud, echoing between the walls with enough reverberation to make Peter’s ears ache. Natasha is in a black leotard and her legs are bare, showing him clearly the way her muscles tremble, the set of red hives overexertion is wringing from her. Her hair is in a severe bun, the front smoothed with serum, the ball of it frizzed, and her face is a splotchy mess of peach and blood red and the terrible white of wet paper. Sweat dribbles down her temples, pools at the bends of her elbows, her knees, dampens the curls spilling at the nape of her neck. Her eyes are red, lips mashed together. She is a furious blur of </span>
  <em>
    <span>fouettes,</span>
  </em>
  <span> a trail of </span>
  <em>
    <span>grand jetes, </span>
  </em>
  <span>and Peter would be in awe if she didn’t look to be on the verge of collapse.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He finds the plug of the speaker and pulls it. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She stops in the middle of a </span>
  <em>
    <span>pirouette</span>
  </em>
  <span> so sharply she collapses, knees on the wood, pointe shoes thudding. “Fuck you,” she gasps. “I almost… I almost had it.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Almost had what?” Peter says furiously. “Almost had a fainting spell? Almost pulled a muscle? Nat. Natasha.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Her trembling hands cover her eyes.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Natasha,” he repeats, softer.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Almost perfect,” she says. “I almost had it perfect. Plug it back in.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“No,” he says.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“I’ll kill you,” she grinds out. Her shoulders shake.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“No you won’t,” he says.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“I won’t,” she whispers. “I won’t.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“I know,” he says. He goes over to her. The wood is cold beneath his feet, hard when he folds his legs and sits beside her. “Why are you doing this to yourself?” he says.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“I must be perfect,” she says. </span>
  <em>
    <span>“Mramor,</span>
  </em>
  <span> marble.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Nat,” he says. Sam with the dishes, Bucky with the poetry. Nat, Natasha, working herself to the bone, and he sees it now, what he was blind to before. The angle of her elbows. The dips of her collarbones could hold pools of lake water steady while she dances. Her jaw, her chin, they were never this sharp. The curves of her thighs are the same, her biceps the same, but they must be cosmetically altered. They must be, because her face is frail, a porcelain tea set that Peter can only handle between two nimble fingers for fear of smashing it all in one sweep. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Natasha,” he says, wrecked. “I didn’t notice,” he didn’t, but he will now, he’ll be a better friend now, “you know you’re taking it too far, you know it.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“I know,” she says. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Peter does not know if this makes it worse. “Natasha,” he says. “Do you see what you’re doing to yourself?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She finally peels her hands from over her eyes. Peter snatches them up in his own, greedy. She stares at them in the mirrors. First Peter, then herself, and she seems to lose even more color, her lips twisting, her brows falling heavy over her eyes.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Stop that,” Peter says. “Stop being mean to my sister or I’ll kick your ass.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“You could never,” Natasha says. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Peter almost says, </span>
  <em>
    <span>I think I might be able to now. Look at yourself. A strong breeze could take you out.</span>
  </em>
  
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“You’re right,” he says instead. “I could never—get as strong as you, be as tough. Not ever.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Natasha rips her eyes away from her reflection and meets Peter’s gaze. Desperation swims there, in the white space between them. “I was almost perfect,” she says again. “Let me try again. I can do it, I swear, let me show you. I never waver.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“I know you never waver,” Peter says. “When you dance, you’re unstoppable.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She blinks. “I am never unstoppable. Not anymore.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“They caught all of us,” Peter says. “Every single one of us.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Well, I am meant to be better,” Natasha snaps. “I am the best. I am the Black Widow. I am that of the shadows incarnate, meant to tear men limb from limb, making my nest in the walls of this stupid country only to rip it apart at the roots.” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Peter pauses, then says, “And that’s all well and good, but you’re kinda part of this stupid country now.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Doesn’t make it less stupid,” she says. “Only makes me more stupid for… becoming this.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Becoming what?” he says.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Soft,” she says. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“I think you were always soft,” Peter says. “Before, you just had to hide it.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Natasha closes her eyes. This is how Peter knows he is right. “But I was not soft like </span>
  <em>
    <span>this,”</span>
  </em>
  <span> Natasha says. “I was not so soft I couldn’t break out of a hallucination when—”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“When Bucky could,” Peter finishes. “How could you possibly blame yourself for that? It was your subconscious at the wheel, not you.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“My subconscious is a pussy,” says Natasha. “It was never a pussy. Now it is, so I have to…” her eyes drift back open. She looks defeated. “I have to starve it out of myself,” she says miserably, “beat it out, work it out of my muscles. I will be marble. Strong and—unbreakable.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Nat,” Peter says. “Natasha.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“I know,” she says. “I don’t know how to not think like this anymore. It’s all tangled wires.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Peter had started tracing his fingertips over her forearm without noticing. He stops, and knits their hands together. Her fingers are tiny. Almost ovular. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“I don’t want to feel like this,” she says. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“I don’t want you to, either,” Peter says. “Will you please tell your therapist this?” He knows there's no way she has. He just knows her.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Natasha looks at him. Looks away. “That feels like giving up. Who am I without this last bit of secret? It’s mine. Without it, I am no one.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Without it,” Peter says, “you open space to fill up with </span>
  <em>
    <span>you.</span>
  </em>
  <span> The Natasha who watches Saturday morning cartoons and plays video games and burps the alphabet and hides Sam’s left airpod. You can have more of that. That sounds like the—Nat, that’s the best thing that could possibly happen. More of you, of your personality. Bigger. Everywhere. I want it everywhere, </span>
  <em>
    <span>you</span>
  </em>
  <span> everywhere.” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Natasha takes a breath that stutters in her chest. “You may be the only one.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“I’m not,” Peter says. “What? Nat. Who told you that? They're lying. Was it your brain? I have some things to say to it.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Peter crawls closer to Natasha, pressing his nose into her temple, his lips by her ear. He hears her puff out a breath almost like a laugh. “Hey, Natasha’s brain,” he says crossly. “Listen up, you big asshole. This is a wonderful person whose skull you’re inhabiting. She’s so smart and capable and funny and loving. She’s—she’s the type of person I’d kill and die for and ask to bury my body because I know she’d do it right. I </span>
  <em>
    <span>love her,”</span>
  </em>
  <span> his voice cracks, “so back off, okay? Let her be happy, shit. She deserves it more than any of us,” he finishes in a mumble, pulling away from her. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She turns to him with tears in her eyes. Her lips press together and she just nods. Nods again, her bun bobbing, her breath hitching. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Yeah?” he says.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She nods and clambers forward into his arms, practically into his lap, and he holds her, releasing a breath that had set him on fire from his belly to his throat. He wraps an arm around her waist, sets a hand limply on top of her head, between her hairline and her bun. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“You’re gonna be </span>
  <em>
    <span>okay,”</span>
  </em>
  <span> he tells her.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She hums. “Can we do some lifts?” she whispers. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Peter tenses. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“I want, for a moment,” she says, “to feel weightless. Like I am flying.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Peter presses his lips to her sweaty forehead. “Okay,” he mumbles against her skin.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>They stand. They stretch, mostly Peter while she watches, and then they cross to the middle of the room.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She rises </span>
  <em>
    <span>en pointe.</span>
  </em>
  
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He prepares. A brief warm up of five </span>
  <em>
    <span>double tours,</span>
  </em>
  <span> fifth position is home base and he finds it each time, steady, this is familiar to his ankles again.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The lift Peter affectionately refers to as </span>
  <em>
    <span>the scary cat one,</span>
  </em>
  <span> Natasha cutting between splits, her legs in all directions. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>An overhead lift. Peter watches in the mirror for Natasha’s face. Her eyes are closed, her limbs sure, her expression one of bliss. Perfect, perfect, perfect. So perfect it aches.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>➴➵➶➴➵➶➴➵➶➴➵➶➴➵➶</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The rain stops overnight and Morgan calls, begging to come over and spend the day with Peter and MJ. This is very exciting. They are going to make cookies. That’s what Morgan says, and they do whatever Morgan wants, always.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>They lock up the liquor and take out the trash and baby-proof the cabin hovel thing as best as they can. Morgan is eight, so it’s not like she’s helpless, but she’s also sort of a feral bastard demon child, so. Better to be safe than sorry.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>While they’re hiding the steak knives, MJ takes Peter’s wrist in her hand and says, all soft and sweet, “Hey.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He turns bouncily and smiles at her like a dolt. “Hi,” he says, gooey.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She rolls her eyes. “I just want to make sure you’re good, ‘cuz you kinda disappeared this morning.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Oh,” he says. “Yeah, yeah, I’m totally cool, all good, so good. I went to work out, is all. Did some dancey stuff.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>MJ’s expression tells Peter that she knows he’s withholding something. “Okay,” she says.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Hey,” Peter says, stepping a little closer. “It’s nothing, okay? I promise. It’s not my story to tell.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She relaxes a little, raising her hand to run her knuckles over the stubble Peter has miraculously managed to grow along his jaw. “Okay,” she says, “if you say so.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He pecks her lips. “I do say so. I say so very much. I also very much say and proclaim that you are, um, the bestest girlfriend in the world and I love you so much but I hear the car so I’m running to get my baby </span>
  <em>
    <span>sister—”</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Peter breaks away, listening to MJ laugh and clatter to lock the rest of the knives away. He flies through the door and watches Morgan climb out of her carseat and onto the dirt path of their driveway, hair in a pair of braids and bright purple overalls looped over her shoulders. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Tony steps out of the driver’s seat with a grin, calling, “Hey, kiddie!” and Peter absolutely, bald-facedly ignores him, running to Morgan, scooping her off the ground as she shrilly screams in his ear and spinning her around as she grips the collar of his shirt and presses her nose into his neck. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“I’m offended!” Tony calls as Peter continues to ignore him, pressing a smattering of kisses all over Morgan’s face. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Mo!” Peter cries, blowing a raspberry into her neck and she jerks wildly, shouting at him. “My munchkin, my light, my eternal soul! My little </span>
  <em>
    <span>meshuggeneh!</span>
  </em>
  <span> I missed you so much! Oh my gosh! Look at you, you’re eight inches taller than two weeks ago! Absolutely not allowed!”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Morgan says, “Put me </span>
  <em>
    <span>down,</span>
  </em>
  <span> Peter,” so he does and he admires her from afar.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Wow,” he says, grinning, shaking his head a little. “Madame Secretary in full form.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“The crank-master didn’t get much sleep last night,” says Tony, marching up beside Peter and snaking his arm forcefully around Peter’s waist as Peter continues to ignore him in favor of his very superior daughter, “because she is not the biggest fan of lightning.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Aw, it’s just Uncle Thor saying hi,” Peter says with an exaggerated pout. Morgan glares back at him.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Tony shakes him. “Look at me!” he hollers. “Stop ignoring me, you ingrate, give me the satisfaction of your attention!”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Holy </span>
  <em>
    <span>crap,”</span>
  </em>
  <span> Peter says with a laugh, finally giving in and nestling into Tony’s expectant embrace.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Well, now I don’t want it,” says Tony.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Oh, bite me,” says Peter, snuggling his face into Tony’s collar. “Hi, old man, it’s good to see you. It’s just better to see your daughter.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Bah humbug,” says Tony, giving Peter a little kiss on the cheek. “Alright, let me go, menace. I have very special plans with mah wife today now that the stinkbug is out of our hair.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Disgusting,” Peter announces, pulling away. “Absolutely worthy of hatred. I am leaving right now and I’m bringing the child with me.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Peter leans over and scoops Morgan up, heading back into the house.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Hey, say goodbye to Daddy!” Tony yells.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Smell you later, alligator,” Morgan calls to him. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Tony says, “I don’t know why I bother with you two,” and climbs into the car.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Is MJ here?” Morgan asks, patting her little hands on Peter’s cheeks. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Of course she’s here,” Peter says, “she wouldn’t miss your visit for the world.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Nice,” says Morgan. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>MJ peeks around the kitchen cabinets as she hears the scuffle of Peter toeing his shoes off. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Morgan!” MJ says with a smile.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Morgan wriggles her way out of Peter’s arms and runs to MJ. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Well now I know how Tony feels,” Peter says sadly.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Morgan pets at MJ’s hair and plants a kiss on her cheek. “California made you even prettier,” Morgan says.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Can I cry?” says MJ, searching for Peter’s eyes.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He just grins. “I would.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Morgan takes out all of their bowls and all of their cookie sheets. MJ pulls out their Farmer’s Market eggs and butter and Peter pulls out his camera to watch and snap pictures and otherwise stay out of the way of the purposeful footsteps of two of his scariest lady-friends.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Morgan gobs cookie dough onto MJ’s nose and MJ has to visibly pause to keep from subconsciously punting Morgan across the kitchen or something. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Peter snaps a lot of pictures of that particular moment between hoarse laughs. He fills up his film, actually, which is frustrating but also good because it means he’s been having lots of good things happen for him to remember. It feels nice, having these moments to cling to.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>When the cookies are in the oven, Morgan starts to yawn. MJ says, “I’ll wash,” all quiet because she knows no one is a nap-artist like Peter is. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Peter scoops Morgan up and brings her to the living room, where he sits her on the armchair and then uses the couch cushions and blankets to make a tiny fort. Peter crawls in to check for structural integrity and pokes a thumbs up through the opening, prompting Morgan to clamber in and lay herself flat atop Peter’s body, her head on his chest and her little legs dangling over either of his hips. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He rests a hand on the middle of her back, feeling soft, and lets the snuffling of her breath carry him off into a nap, falling asleep to the realization this is the first time he’s let himself sleep in front of her since it all happened.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>➴➵➶➴➵➶➴➵➶➴➵➶➴➵➶</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Morgan gets snagged up before dinner, after a very satisfying nap on behalf of all parts that Tony wakes them from with a shake and a smug smile. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Peter groans, “Disguuusting,” and Tony lifts an even grumpier Morgan from off Peter’s body. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>They share their goodbyes, make loose plans for dinner next week, and then Tony is off.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Bucky makes pot pies for dinner, which is nice after all of the rain. They eat slowly, and Peter watches Natasha just enough to make her look guilty and finish a plate. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>When Peter mentions in passing his lack-of-film predicament, Bucky’s head pops up and he says, “You should go to The Walmart. It’s pretty close by, actually.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Um,” Peter says, as ice flows through his veins. The Farmer’s Market and the dog park are a whole different beast than Walmart. The latter has security cameras, lots of them, and people from all over. Walmart is not safe like the market is. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Bucky says, “I’ll take you.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Four pairs of eyes lock on him.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“I could bring him,” Michelle protests. “I’m the least likely to get recognized.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“I can protect him with my, y’know,” Bucky says, gesturing to his body. “He’s less likely to be picked out if he goes alone in, like, a college kid outfit, scruffy and sad—“ <em>Hey,</em> says Peter, “—and I’ll tail him from far away. That’s probably his best disguise.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Peter looks at MJ, his stomach actively attempting to scale the length of his esophagus and make an appearance upon the dinner table. “I don’t want to put you in danger by bringing you out with me.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She glares at him. “I can protect myself.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“But I don’t know if I can,” Peter says. He yanks on the ends of his hair. “MJ, I can’t handle worrying about myself and you at the same time. I don’t have the space for that yet.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“You wouldn’t have to worry about me,” she says. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“I would anyway,” Peter answers. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“What makes this so different from the falls?” she says, crossing her arms. “We went there alone together and you weren’t too edgy for it.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Peter is rubbed the wrong way at the very </span>
  <em>
    <span>principle</span>
  </em>
  <span> of her using the word </span>
  <em>
    <span>edgy</span>
  </em>
  <span> to shorten </span>
  <em>
    <span>paralyzed by fear.</span>
  </em>
  <span> “This is more public,” he says. “This is </span>
  <em>
    <span>public</span>
  </em>
  <span> public.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She is unimpressed.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“It’s different,” he says helplessly. “It’s just different, Em.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>MJ stares at him. Peter doesn’t know what she finds, but it makes her back down with a single nod. She pushes her chair back, clears her throat. “I’m not mad,” she says, “but I’m going to go to bed now. Okay? Wake me when you’re home.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Peter watches her go. “Should I—?” he says.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“She needs space,” Natasha says. “Let her breathe.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Peter frowns. “Am I allowed to go to my room to change clothes?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He goes anyway. MJ is sitting on the bed with her cellphone in her hands. Peter’s eyes lock on it for a moment before flitting up to her face. She flicks an eyebrow at him and he raises his hands in surrender, which makes her smirk. She nods him on.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He changes into sweatpants, socks, and those Birkenstocks Nat really did order him. He mashes a Cornell cap atop his overgrown hair. Usually he would have been more annoying, shaking his ass at MJ or pretend-stripping or whatever, but he has just enough tact to not do that now.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Bucky is waiting for him in the car. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The drive is short, an </span>
  <em>
    <span>Elton John’s Greatest Hits</span>
  </em>
  <span> CD playing from the dashboard. Bucky taps his fingers on the wheel along to </span>
  <em>
    <span>Take Me To the Pilot.</span>
  </em>
  <span> This is their only way to listen to music, save for the records back at the lake house. Their radio stations are blocked. For the first time, this rubs Peter the wrong way.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>They park mid-way through the lot. It’s not quite dark yet, but the sun paints purple streaks across the clouds in the sky like watercolor paints spilled loose on fiberfill. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Bucky says, “I’ll trail you after two minutes. Don’t go right to the electronics section. Wind around a little, make yourself sparse, hard to follow. You should grab some Chex Mix, for sure.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Okay,” Peter says, heart in his throat. He stares out the windows, filing faces. None look familiar. He would have seen them in his dreams if they were Beck’s. He’s almost sure. "Why Chex Mix?"</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>"Because it's scrumptious," Bucky says.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Peter yanks on his earlobe.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Hey,” Bucky says softly. He reaches over and grabs Peter’s hand, giving it a squeeze. “You’ll be just fine, pal. Were you ever this nervous to go shopping before?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Only once,” Peter says. “I had to get tampons for MJ and I didn’t know beforehand that there were different sizes, but I was too afraid to ask her what size her hooha is.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Bucky snorts. “What’d you do?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Texted May asking for an estimate.” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Bucky shakes his head, grinning. “Dumbass,” he says fondly. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“I was then given an in-depth, over-the-phone guide to the female genitalia and had to ask MJ her size anyway, so it wasn’t worth the trauma.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“See, this won’t even be as bad as that.” Bucky squeezes Peter’s shoulder. “You got your cash?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Peter nods his assent. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Camera is around your neck. You look like any random dipshit college junior coming to develop pictures from frat parties and protests and, like, maybe a few of his own tasteful nudes,” Bucky says.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Nice,” says Peter. He opens the door and climbs out. “Fuck. Fuckin’ hell.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Bucky gives him a single thumbs up, but his stump arm rises like it’s showing its support as well.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Peter goes inside.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>His breath sucks out of his lungs.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It’s not that crowded. It’s just the bright white of the ceilings, the polished floors: it’s so like the drone room that he wants to vomit. He hears the stomp of boots echo in his ears and a vague silhouette ruffle in the corner of his eye. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Someone bumps into him and he jumps a foot into the air, turning quickly. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It’s a woman, older than sixty, who says, “Oh, sorry, dear,” and makes her way around him.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Peter shoves his hands in his pockets and follows, deeper into the store. Produce to his right, registers to his left. His heart pounds deafeningly. His tongue is dry.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He winds through an aisle with pens and paper. Finds himself staring at binders, counting their spines and sucking in a breath for each one. Goes to the snack aisle, grabs Chex Mix. And a tube of Pringles.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He’s fine, he tells himself. No one here knows him, wants anything to do with him. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Bucky must be in the store by now. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Peter begins to set off towards electronics. He picks at the skin at the corner of his thumb nail. He digs his incisors into his tongue. Eventually, his heart slows. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He perches at one of the photo development kiosks. The other is empty. He thanks G-d. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He follows the steps. Lets the machine swallow his cash. Watches the photos spit out slowly, one by one. His heart jolts every time they tumble into the little receptacle.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>When they finish, he packs them in an envelope. He closes the envelope. He stands. He catches Bucky examining bananas out of the corner of his eye. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He grabs new film. Brings it to self-checkout. Buys it.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He takes his photos and his film and his snacks and his camera and his leftover cash and his receipt and he walks slowly and directly out of the store. He heads to the car. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It unlocks when he’s a few steps away and he climbs in, closing the door behind him. He sits in the passenger seat and stares out the windshield.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The driver’s side door opens and Bucky sits. He locks the doors. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Peter tilts forward, burying his head between his knees, and lets his heartbeat rock itself out of control.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Bucky places his hand on Peter’s back and lets it rest there, warm and heavy, as Peter struggles to catch his breath. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Once Peter is done, he sits up. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Bucky squeezes his shoulder, jaw tight.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>They drive home.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>➴➵➶➴➵➶➴➵➶➴➵➶➴➵➶ </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Peter is ready to fall onto his bed. He walks past Sam and Nat’s expectant figures, cuddled together on the couch reading a magazine. He opens the door to his bedroom, and MJ is there. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He freezes.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Hey,” she breathes, seeing immediately. She comes up onto her knees and clambers to the end of the bed, holding her hands out. “Hey, okay, come here, lover. Come here.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Peter goes, climbing onto the mattress, letting her pull him towards the headboard. She pushes his head onto her chest and cradles it. He breathes her scent.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“This is why,” he says miserably. He does not elaborate.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“I understand,” she says. “Sorry, it was probably selfish of me to make it about what I wanted—um, what I thought was right. I wasn’t right and I should have listened.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“I could’ve explained better,” Peter says. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“It’s not your job to,” MJ says. “It’s your job to get better and tell me what you need, and it’s my job to hear it and follow through.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“You can’t read my mind,” he says. “If I don’t tell you, then how will you know anything.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She sighs. “I don’t know, Pete. I don’t know.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>For now, she holds him, and Peter thinks that is enough.</span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>tw: VERY LOOSE implication of an eating disorder in one character. no descriptions of it, not really, and hardly even a conversation about it.</p><p>meshuggeneh: crazy person<br/>i love u &lt;33 keep your eyes peeled for my friendly neighborhood exchange fic! it'll go up any day now! leave me a comment and tell me your favorite pizza toppings. mine is olives and no cheese bc im vegan ;-) sometimes i use vegan cheese, but that shit is expensive. my napoletana roots say crust, sauce, olives, basil, fresh tomato, that's that. DELICIOUS.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0008"><h2>8. new york, city of fuckin’ miracles</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>“Hey,” MJ’s voice cuts. “Peter. Peter, look at me.”</p><p>He rips his eyes up.</p><p>“You checking the news?” she says.</p><p>He can hardly nod.</p><p>She sits up. “Come here,” she says. </p><p>He can’t move. </p><p>“Peter.”</p><p>His eyes drift back down to the phone screen.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>tw in end notes!</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>The sun rises, the way it always does. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Peter’s eyes creak open, heavy and unwilling. He had dreamt in colors and shapes. Vague impressions of fears. Sloppy recollections and embroidery threads pulled loose from tapestries. They had left him exhausted. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Peter darts a look around the room, unsettled. Just honey-colored light from having forgotten to close the shades. MJ’s duffle outside the closet. A hamper overflowing, a sock by the door, a short, stubby cactus on his desk. A tissue box and MJ’s cell phone on the nightstand.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He lingers upon the last.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Turns to MJ on the mattress beside him, her head cushioned in the crook of her elbow, her lips squished forward. She breathes out with a puff. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He holds out a finger and slips it into the spiral of one of her curls. Bounces it, smooth and heavy with product. Tugs on it gently, the barest of smiles on his lips, knowing she would sock him for it were she awake. She looks like a princess off-duty like this. Rosy and young and a little bit regal. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“What a <em>punim,”</em> Peter breathes, rubbing a thumb across her cheek.  Her nose wrinkles and then relaxes. She hums.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“You’re killing me,” he whispers, and he leans over to press a kiss to the bend of her elbow. It’s something he remembers Ben saying to May. It feels sacred, almost, whispered into the still morning air. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He sits up, after. His shirt rasps against the headboard. His hair tousles in the light breeze coming off his ceiling fan, languidly spinning. A blur of mahogany wood. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He yanks at his earlobe, stretches his shoulders. Presses the pads of his thumbs into his eyes. Pulls his socks up. Changes his mind and takes them off, lobbing them across the room. Counts to thirty while holding his breath and then lets it all out in one harsh puff. Watches a lady bug crawl across the seam between his wall and the ceiling. He stews.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He grabs MJ’s phone off the nightstand. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Unlocks it. Opens Google and searches </span>
  <em>
    <span>spider-man?</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>When it loads, he almost throws the phone.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Millions of results. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Where is Our Spider-Man Now?</span>
  </em>
  <span> says the Times. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Crime Takes No Vacation -- Why Should Our Heroes? Where Have Spider-Man and The Avengers Gone and Why Was No Statement Made?</span>
  </em>
  <span> says the Post.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Far From Home: Spidey Seems to Have Crawled From His Web. Masked Menace Finally Moved to the Dark Side?</span>
  </em>
  <span> says the Bugle. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Peter slips out from under the sheets as gently as he can manage. He stands and continues to read.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Do Heroes Need Time Off?</span>
  </em>
  <span> says Buzzfeed. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Should They Get Paid Leave? What’s Next, Insurance Benefits?</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Has The Spider-Man Kidnapped Our Heroes and Stowed Them Away?</span>
  </em>
  <span> asks the Daily News.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Wall Street Journal says </span>
  <em>
    <span>Drop In Stock Market due to Spider-Man? More Likely Than You Might Think!</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Metro NY. </span>
  <em>
    <span>City in Shambles. Thanks, Spider-Menace.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Crime Rates Have Never Been Higher!</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>What Can We Do Without Heroes?</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Too Afraid to Cross the Street? Me too! Spidey, come Home!</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Hey,” MJ’s voice cuts. “Peter. Peter, look at me.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He rips his eyes up.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“You checking the news?” she says.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He can hardly nod.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She sits up. “Come here,” she says. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He can’t move. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Peter.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>His eyes drift back down to the phone screen.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Peter.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He takes the three steps forward he needs to hand off her phone. Then he turns and strides out of the room, deaf to the way she calls after him.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>All three of them are in the living room, on the couches, Bucky with a heating pack on his bum shoulder, Nat and Sam with their eyes glued to </span>
  <em>
    <span>Adventure Time</span>
  </em>
  <span> on the TV screen.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Have any of you seen the news?” Peter says. He hears his own voice as if through a pool of water.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Sam pauses the TV, looking uneasy. “Um,” he says, </span>
  <em>
    <span>“no,</span>
  </em>
  <span> because it’s blocked on our television and we don’t have phones?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Peter presses his knuckles to his chest, trying to iron the knots flat. “We,” he says. He hunches over, elbows on his knees. “Oh my G-d. I stole MJ’s phone. I checked the news while she was—while she was asleep.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Peter,” says Natasha.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>His next breath stutters. And that’s it. Like tripping over the first step and falling bodily down the flight, he is helpless to it.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>His fingers find his hair and pull. He falls onto the floor, knees bent in front of him, a sharp pain in his temples, a nauseous pressure on his throat. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It’s MJ’s voice that reaches him first, though he hadn’t seen her follow him out of the bedroom. “Dumbass,” she says fondly, frustratedly, like a pet name. “Look what you’re doing to yourself. You know the media, Pete. You know they twist everything.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“We left them—we left them—”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“In the capable hands of Reed Richards and the Fantastic Four?” says MJ. “With that Daredevil guy and his weird katana-wielding friend? Those Defenders guys? The X-Men? The New York fire department?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Not the same,” Peter grinds out. Flecks of bright white are staining his vision. The tips of his fingers feel clumsy and stupid. “Wolverine is a dick—the X-Men—it’s not the same.” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Peter, look at me,” MJ says.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He does. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“This isn’t your fault,” she says evenly. “I need you to breathe, okay? Just—get your breathing under control, and then we can talk this out. Calmly. We can work it out as soon as you're calm.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He watches her lips while she talks. Listens to the scuff of her shirt as her chest expands with her breaths. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“I fucked up my city,” is the first thing he says. “I spend… my whole life fighting for this place, protecting this place, and then I just. I break it.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Peter, I love you, but you didn’t break New York,” MJ says. “Take it from the only one of us who has been into the city since the start of the summer. The city is </span>
  <em>
    <span>fine.</span>
  </em>
  <span> I walked around at night and I didn’t get mugged by a swarm of, like, raccoon-themed criminals or whatever.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Doesn’t matter,” Peter says with a gulp. “If they—feel abandoned, then I abandoned them.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Kid,” says Sam. Peter thinks he looks pale. “Come on. Off the floor. We’re gonna talk about this.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Peter rises to his knees, unsteady, a wave of vertigo sweeping over his vision, warping it. MJ closes the distance between them and takes his hands, helping him off the floor. She pushes him onto the couch and he falls into the cushion crease, sinking in, his knees to his chest and his hands wrapped tight around the arches of his feet.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>There is a long moment of silence where they all share looks. This is hitting Peter, but it is certainly about all of them. He didn’t search their names. But he can assume.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Sorry, it was probably selfish of me,” Peter says. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“What?” says Sam.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“I only, um. Searched for Spider-Man. Not any of your names. So. Sorry.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Why would you even think to search any of our names?” says Bucky. “You’re you, pal, of course you searched yourself and not us.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Are you just now realizing how guilt-ridden he is all the time?” MJ says.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Natasha interrupts, her gaze intense, searching, as it lingers on Peter. It feels almost violating, stripping. Leaves him naked to her. She hardly ever makes him feel this way anymore. “You can’t listen to what the press says about you. They’ll never say a good word and mean it or a bad word and stand behind it. They speak out of their asses. New York </span>
  <em>
    <span>loves you,</span>
  </em>
  <span> Petya.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Oh,” says MJ softly. “Peter, are you upset because you think they hate you? You always care so much what people think of you, it must be crippling. Is that it?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Stop talking to me like I’m twelve,” he says, sharp. And then, ridden with a second layer of immediate guilt, “Sorry, shit, I’m so fucking sorry. I’m a mess. I’m such a mess it’s embarrassing. I’m mad at me, not any of you.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Forget pride,” says Natasha. “The four of us, together, have no right to it anymore.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“You saw me with piss on my legs after being in that chair,” says Bucky dryly. “We’ve seen each other worse. We’ll see each other worse again, most likely—” and that makes Peter’s stomach plummet, “—but we fix shit. Together. Okay?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Peter yanks on the mouth of his shirt. “Okay,” he says.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Sam, usually so calm, fidgets with the edges of the blanket over his legs. “So the press is trying to guilt us into coming back,” Sam says in his </span>
  <em>
    <span>I’m a therapist</span>
  </em>
  <span> voice. “They’re trying to make us feel bad in the wake of an event they don’t even know happened. We, mentally, physically, and fuckin’—spiritually, our very cores, could not go back onto the job right away.” Sam straightens, some of the color back in his cheeks. “We had to play around with our trauma a bit first. Give it a good beating, like some bread dough, y’know? Massage that shit. Rolling pin, give it a whack or two. Pound it into shape. Like, a good shape for us to—” Sam makes a cradle with his arms, “—carry around.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Mine is a baguette,” says Bucky.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Mm. Cheese danish,” says Nat.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Mine’s an everything bagel,” says Sam. “Had to boil it. Give it some flavor. Baked it up. Now I eat that shit for breakfast with lox. You follow me?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Uh,” says Peter. “Not really, but also yes?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“You needed to turn your trauma into bread,” says Sam. “You needed to leave the city and find a more conducive bakery, with fresher ingredients, a better teacher—”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Are you making this metaphor? Or is this metaphor making you?” says MJ.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Probably the second one,” Sam answers. “But you know what I’m sayin’, right, kid?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Peter says, “Yeah. I mean, yeah. It’s a lot easier to carry a soft pretzel around New York than it is to just have, like, a ball of dough in my hands.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Exactly!” Sam says, hopping in his seat and pointing at Peter. “You got it, kid. How are you supposed swing with dough dripping all over you, making your suit all sticky?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Not well,” says Peter. “It’d get caught in my webs. But I can just, like, wear the soft pretzel as a bracelet and then munch on it later. Yo, double purpose. An accessory and a snack. Accsnackery.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“You guys </span>
  <em>
    <span>astound me,”</span>
  </em>
  <span> MJ says as Nat and Bucky nod along with Sam and Peter, but all four of them look calmer for the time being, so they count it as a miracle. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>➴➵➶➴➵➶➴➵➶➴➵➶➴➵➶</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Peter knows he shouldn’t have tried to sleep that night. Not after the scare from that morning. It would have been asking far too much from the universe to leave him at peace.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Didn’t you guess sooner?</span>
  </em>
  <span> Beck says, picking at his fingernails, an uncanny grin on his stretched lips. This time, he has blood in his teeth. One eyebrow sits higher on his forehead than the other. Just slightly. Enough for Peter’s stomach to roll. He strains against the bonds that tie him to the wall. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>This is different. He can’t remember ever being held like this.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Things are never all that concrete in Peter’s dreams, and this is no exception. The floor warps under his feet. There is no smell, no taste. He has to squint to see like he did in his pre-bite days. The only things grounding him are the chains.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>They never held you in great regard, </span>
  </em>
  <span>Beck continues, strolling. </span>
  <em>
    <span>But this is new, right, Petey? Outright slander,</span>
  </em>
  <span> Beck tuts, </span>
  <em>
    <span>almost rude of them. Or, it would be, if it weren’t so true. </span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Beck stops walking, right in front of him, leaning close. </span>
  <em>
    <span>You did leave them, didn’t you? I took you first, that’s true, I won’t argue that! But you had the opportunity to hop right back into it. And you didn’t take it.</span>
  </em>
  <span> Beck is almost pressed against Peter’s chest, Peter’s back flat against the wall. He closes his eyes and turns his head to the side, desperate to get away. </span>
  <em>
    <span>You ran. You slinked away like the sneaky spider you are, like the </span>
  </em>
  <span>child</span>
  <em>
    <span> you are, begging for responsibility and then shirking it as soon as you can. Leaving it to the big boys, the ones who can handle it better than you, hm?</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Peter says, “Stop.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Beck laughs gleefully. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Oh, you hate it when I’m right, don’t you?</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“You’re wrong,” Peter says. “I can’t—how could I go out there and fight when you’re still in my head like this?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Beck flickers. </span>
  <em>
    <span>How do you know I’m just in your head, buddy?</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Fuck off,” Peter says.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Beck smiles. Raises his arms. An invitation. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Make me.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Peter wrenches his arms forward, pulling the chains holding him down out of the walls in a shower of concrete dust. Peter goes to kick Beck across the cheek, but before his foot can land, Beck disappears, leaving a small pile of ash where he had stood.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Peter prods it with his toe.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It begins to collapse. To wriggle, alive with movement. A snake bursts free, leaping towards him, jaw stretched, greenish scales throwing light, and Peter falls back with a shout.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The moment he would have hit the ground, he wakes.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Grateful for the fact that MJ sleeps like a comatose rock, he tosses himself out of bed, nearly tripping over the loose ends of the sheets, and scrambles into the bathroom, barely on his knees before he’s emptying his stomach into the toilet. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>When he finishes, he rolls back on his heels. Finds himself sitting, palms flat on the tiles, breathing. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He stands. Rinses his mouth out with gross, warm tap water. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Overcome by the shaking in his shoulders, he grips the bowl of the sink between his hands and leans over it. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It never ends. It never fucking ends. All this time and he still lingers sly in Peter’s dreams. As if his waking hours are not enough, swallowed as they are within Beck’s silver smoke. Trailing silhouettes out of the corner of his eyes. Fuck. Fucking fuck.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Peter finds the latch on the side of their medicine cabinet and lets the door swing open. A fucking armada of tiny orange bottles. Fluoxetine, sertraline, paroxetine. Prazosin. Super strength pain relief. Anti-psychotics.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>White-capped little soldiers marching on. Peter envies them. They have one job and they do it.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>They do it.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Peter grabs the bottle of alprazolam with his name printed on the side. Turns it over in his hand. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He sits on the floor, cross-legged, boxers hiked enough for the tile to sting, too cold under his thighs.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He presses his palm flat against the lid and presses down.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The door to the bathroom opens and he jumps, feeling a wave of immediate shame color him red and prick his eyes, the tenacity of the moment—the romanticism of </span>
  <em>
    <span>l’appel du vide—</span>
  </em>
  <span>all but dissipating.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Natasha stares at him. She sits, reaching over to prod the door closed with a finger. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Hey,” she says.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Hi,” he says. He wonders how she possibly could have known.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“My ledger is drenched with red,” Natasha starts conversationally. “I’ve killed more people than I’ve known. My ledger is just one big bloodstain.” Conspiratorially, “I’ve never been very good at washing bloodstains out.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Hydrogen peroxide,” says Peter. Then, “This is my red. Well, not all of it, because the start of my red was Ben, it was Ben dying right—there, because I didn’t stop—” Peter’s breath stutters, “</span>
  <span>—</span>
  <span>anyway. That only opened the floodgates to a whole Nile of bloodstains. I repent,” he says desperately, “I’ve prayed, tried to—to work off my sin. Teshuvah, and all that. But. I don’t know. It never ends,” he rolls the bottle along the tile floor and it skips as it hits the grout, “it never ends. Every time I think I might maybe be forgiven, I’m not.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“In the eyes of your G-d? Or in your own eyes?” says Natasha.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Mine,” says Peter, voice cracking. “Because I’m selfish and, frankly, haven’t given a shit if G-d forgives me for a while now.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Would your G-d not want you to forgive yourself first?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“I don’t know what G-d wants, Nat,” Peter sighs. He buries his face in his hands. “I don’t know what </span>
  <em>
    <span>I</span>
  </em>
  <span> want. No, actually, that’s a lie. I want to stop doing stupid, selfish shit without thinking about it. I want to—”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Save everyone?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Pretty much,” he says with an empty sort of a laugh. “And don’t—don’t tell me it’s impossible. I already know that.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“I won’t, then,” she says primly, scooting closer to him. Their shoulders press. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>A long moment passes before Natasha says, “It’s not selfish to take care of yourself.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“That’s pretty hypocritical coming from you,” he says, more snappish than he intended.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“This isn’t about me,” Natasha says, rising to his venom. She grabs the bottle of anxiety medication from where it bobbles on the tile and shakes it. “This is about you and the fact that I found you here with this in your hand and—” she stops to breathe. “And a look on your face that I never want to see again,” she finishes. She breathes again, mechanically steady. “New York knew how to function without you. They can do it again, so long as you’re still around to see it.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“They didn’t function. There was crime everywhere, all the time.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“And there still was crime with you there. You didn’t stop it all. You couldn’t. It’s impossible to save a city like that. To save that many people. No matter how hard you try. There will be crime with or without you,” she says. “Petya, you’re exhausted.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>And, like he had been waiting to hear the words said aloud, he crumples, a single dry sob tossing itself forth from the pit of his gut. “I’m so tired,” he says. “I’m so fucking tired I’m losing my mind.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Natasha’s arm snakes around his shoulders and she pushes Peter’s head onto her lap. “Okay,” she says. “Rest. I’m here to hold the weight of it for a minute. You rest, and we’ll figure everything out in the morning.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“I’m so sorry you had to find me like this,” he says. “‘M sorry you have to do this for me even though you’re hurting, too.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She leans over and presses a firm kiss to the back of his head as one of his hands reaches out and cuffs her ankle. “You wouldn’t be my annoying </span>
  <em>
    <span>mladshiy brat</span>
  </em>
  <span> if you weren’t bothering me while I’m otherwise occupied,” she says flippantly. He likes the way she slips into Russian sometimes. Like it’s their secret to share.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She begins to hum under her breath, something lilting and familiar and waltz-like; something out of a dream so distant Peter cannot touch it save for the rosy, golden glow around its face.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She sings to him until his heart slows, even though he does not sleep. When the sun begins to peek through the window and spread its purple, dawn light across the floor, they move to the kitchen, where Natasha makes tea and Peter sets the table and they wait for a new day to arrive, just like the others.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>➴➵➶➴➵➶➴➵➶➴➵➶➴➵➶</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>May comes. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>MJ called her. MJ is not usually a narc, so this surprises Peter to his very core. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She folds him in her arms, her long braid swinging, the skirt of her sundress hanging around her calves. One hand goes to the back of Peter’s neck, like it has since he was little and wheezy and bespectacled, and the other presses him entirely against her, his chin tucking over her head.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Hi, I love you,” he says in shock, “I love you, why are you here? Don’t you have work? What? Holy cow.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She pulls away enough to cup his cheek and meet his eyes. She’s just like he remembers. Radiant. Maybe a little wrinkly. The most beautiful lady in the whole world, and, geez, he loves her.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“My aunt-y senses were tingling,” she says, wagging a brow at him. “I had a gut feeling that I should make the drive. So I did. Let me in, let me say hi to your friends,” she says, patting Peter’s chest with both palms, as if Peter is nine and having a sleepover and May wants to see what kids he’s fraternizing with.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Peter shakes his head in disbelief. “I can’t believe I live with people who have actual criminal records and yet tattling to my aunt is the worst thing any of you have ever done to me.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Jamie!” May says, going to Bucky with an enormous smile and her arms wide open. “Hey, how are you?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“I’m doing just swell, Miss May,” Bucky says, giving her a one-armed hug. “And you?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“I’m just lovely,” says May, brushing some loose strands of hair off her forehead. “The sun is shining, it smells like cow shit. I miss my city, I get to see you all! And my boy. So, you know,” she pretends to weigh lots on her open palms. “It evens out. Hey, let me go find Natasha and Sam. And MJ! I want to see all your little friends, Peter,” she calls over her shoulder as she walks deeper into the house like she owns the place.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“I need a drink,” Peter says, turning to Bucky.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“She’s a doll,” Bucky says. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“A possessed Baby Alive, maybe,” Peter grumbles.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>May finds him again once he’s settled on the couch, mug of tea in hand, moping. MJ is sitting on an armchair, reading and looking superior, and Bucky is cooking a second round of pancakes. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She falls down next to him and he slings an arm over her shoulders, feeling both enormously old and a fraction of his age. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“So I heard you’re bummed because the city hates Spider-Man all of a sudden,” says May.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Peter squirms.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Yeah, it was crazy, they turned on a dime. One day they were selling Spider-Man merch at every corner store, and the next day they were still selling that same merch but no one was buying it,” May says solemnly. She knuckles an eye under her glasses and the movement sends a thick wave of lavender oil scent at him. “Everyone was all like </span>
  <em>
    <span>wahh we hate Spider-Man.</span>
  </em>
  <span>It was crazy. You couldn’t go a block over without running into a riot with bonafide torches and pitchforks, everyone yelling for Spidey’s head on a stake.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Alright,” Peter says, already feeling silly. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>May prods him in the stomach. “You know the papers have always been so hot and cold about you anyway, </span>
  <em>
    <span>amore mio.</span>
  </em>
  <span> They write whatever gets them the most readers.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Sure,” Peter says.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Don’t </span>
  <em>
    <span>sure</span>
  </em>
  <span> me,” she says. “You hear what I’m saying, right?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“I hear you,” he says, and it still doesn’t exactly sit right on his shoulders, but it sorta—molds to his shape more. Like a denim jacket after a few wears.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Hey,” says May, “ooh, has Tony told you? There’s a bunch of new kids on the block now. Little squirty teenagers like you were, running around training in the alleys and whatever, kicking criminal ass.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Peter sits straight up. His eyes bugging, he turns head-on towards May. “What!” he yelps. “Holy shit, what!”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>May snorts. “Chill. They’re not going on missions or anything yet. They’re probably just figuring out their powers.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Are they mutants?” Peter says. “Like me? Are they like me?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>May winces. “I don’t know, baby. I barely know anything more than the fact that they exist.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Peter deflates slightly. “Oh,” he says. He then turns to Bucky in the kitchen and raises his voice, knowing Sam and Nat will likely be close. “Hey! Guys! There’s new blood running around! New heroes! Little baby ones!”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Shit,” Sam yells.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Is anyone training them?” Nat calls.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Peter turns to May.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“I dunno,” she says with a shrug.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Huh,” Peter says. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“I think you’d be good at that,” MJ calls from her perch. “All of you, but, like, especially you.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“At—what?” says Peter.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Training new blood,” says MJ. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Peter lets that hit him, then hit him again. The second time, it feels like a smack. “Huh,” he says again.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“It’d be… a nice happy medium,” suggests May, a glint in her eyes. “You’d still be protecting New York, just by proxy.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“By the transitive property,” Peter agrees. “And, like. Without Tony and Steve, who else do they really have? Y’know? Just us four.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Bucky pads in from the kitchen, apron on, one of his sweatpants legs bunched over the bulge of his calve, mussed and tired-looking. “In all honesty,” Bucky says, “that sounds like the happiest medium there is. We’d still be working. Protecting people. But getting the next generation ready too. And more time for us to—take a fuckin' rest. Take a load off.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Peter says, carefully, “I don’t think I would be able to bring myself to <em>Spider-Man</em> in the way I was before, anyway. That’s, like, the hugest thing Katie has been telling me. That I’m wearing myself out.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“She’s right,” May chimes. “You’ve been going since you were fourteen, Pete. You deserve a little break. Or a change in career. You could start training instead. You’re good with kids, kids love you.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“I don’t think I could do </span>
  <em>
    <span>just</span>
  </em>
  <span> training,” Peter says. “Not yet, anyway. But I… would feel better about slimming down my patrols, knowing we’d be helping the next group of us pick up the slack.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Sam and Natasha had entered the room at some point and now come into Peter’s sightline. Nat’s hair is a rat’s nest. Sam’s wearing the same shirt he’s been wearing for a week now. Christ. Maybe being in the thick of it like this has kept Peter from seeing how deeply exhausted they <em>all are</em>, not just him. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“I’d like to hear more about them,” Nat says as she perches on the edge of the coffee table.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“If one of ‘em’s got wings, I call him,” says Sam.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Peter realizes quite suddenly that he has been a squeaking gear. He’s been oiling himself copiously, hoping to fix the problem, but he continues to whine with every twist. He still works, does his job, but he’s inconvenient. There are people out there better suited for all of this. Better to be the face on the front of the magazine while he works behind the curtain, maintaining the machinery, the grand conductor of the city’s pattering little hero orchestra. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He’s always been best at that, anyway. Tinkering, sifting through parts to find what works. Improving what can be improved. Creating something new to fill a space left behind. Using his hands. He’s always been the hands. He’s Hephaestus, not Apollo; he’s the smolder inside an oven, not the sun throwing stark relief over the silhouette of a world so familiar as to be ancient. He never meant to parade himself around. He’s been sucked into a world far above his little section of Queens, and it’s killing him. This is his chance to put his life back onto its axis. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He’s meant to make. It just took some jumbling for him to remember it.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“I think this would be really, really good for us,” Peter says, soft, reverent, afraid to puncture the image behind his eyes. “We can do this. We can—our next step. Easing our way back in. Training the Young Avengers. That’s what we’re meant to do. I can feel it in my bones.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The smiles he receives make him feel enormous. Make him feel settled. Make him feel sure. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>This is their next step, and it will be good.</span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>tw: peter, after a nightmare, runs to the bathroom and pukes. he sees his pill bottle in the cabinet and has an intrusive thought that basically says "those would fix this, i bet." he doesn't even open the bottle. i just want to be very safe with you all &lt;3</p><p>punim: sweet face<br/><a href="https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/repentance/">Teshuvah</a>: In the Jewish tradition, repentance is called teshuvah, a Hebrew word translated as “returning.” One of the Hebrew words for sin is chet, which in Hebrew means “to go astray.” Thus the idea of repentance in Jewish thought is a return to the path of righteousness.<br/>mladshiy brat: little brother (this one is russian, for a change! flavor!)<br/>amore mio: my love (this one is italian)</p><p>FINALLY I GET TO MENTION MY BABEY LOVES: THE YOUNG AVENGERS FJSKNHKWENCEEAKLJELJNBRKYU im TWEAKING i love those bastards!!!!!!!! if this is done and people are curious and invested, i will ABSOLUTELY write bits following this storyline with the young avengers. billy and teddy LITERALLY own my ass. we love the gays.</p><p>let me know how youre feeling! the thinks! the moves! <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23883868">begging you to read beedee's and my lizard child peter fic</a> because we make ourselves laugh SO HARD ALL THE TIME, but especially while writing this. beedee is the missing half of my brain. read all her works. (if u need a spur, she wrote "built from scraps." I KNOW RIGHT. i can't believe i even COMMUNICATE with her. brilliance. it's like writing with fucking e.e. cummings or some shit.)</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0009"><h2>9. the boys are back in town (ow natasha don’t kick me it’s a reference i swear)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>“Peter, you were driving yourself into the ground, running away from your—frankly bountiful amounts of trauma, so that you wouldn’t have to deal with it. Imagine how that all compounded.”</p><p>“I don’t have to imagine it. I lived it,” Peter says.</p><p>“And I’m assuming it feels amazing to be working through it all now?”</p><p>Peter pauses for a moment. “Yeah,” he says. “It feels like I can walk again without falling right through the floor.”</p><p>“Good,” Katie says emphatically. “A little shift in perspective and look at you. Hey. I’m proud of you. Like, for real,” Katie kicks him again, “you showed up and you listened and you talked and you tried to get better and it’s <em>working.</em> Dude!”</p><p>Peter grins a little, his ears warm with blush. “Dude,” he echoes.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Intensely, this is what Peter clings to.</p><p> </p><p>His waking hours are spent obsessing over what the kids will need to know. What type of gear will they need? Do they have suits, or will Peter get to make some for them? What <em> are </em> their powers? What does Peter wish he had known before he started everything? What would have helped him shoulder all of this weight without it slipping from his shoulders and taking him out?</p><p> </p><p>“Actual training?” Katie suggests at their meeting that afternoon. “Instead of just jumping into shit with a plucky disposition and a punch that could level a city block.”</p><p><br/><br/>“True,” says Peter, sitting on his hands to keep from gesticulating wildly. He’s practically vibrating. At the end of his sessions, he usually finds a sunny spot and curls up there until he lands back in his body, but today he thinks he might have to run a quick marathon just to be able to sit down again without fourth-of-July-fireworks bursting all over the porch. “That definitely would’ve been helpful. Would’ve broken a lot less fingers. And arms. And legs. And ribs.”</p><p> </p><p>Katie levels him with a look. </p><p> </p><p>“I wasn’t getting hurt so easily anymore by the start of this summer!” Peter assures. </p><p> </p><p>“Probably because half your bones are reinforced steel or have screws sticking out of them by now,” Katie says.</p><p> </p><p>“Not true!” says Peter. “Well, actually.”</p><p> </p><p>She snorts a laugh and prods him with a toe. “I’m glad you’re so excited about this. I honestly thought you’d be less enthusiastic about slimming down your patrol hours.”</p><p> </p><p>“I did, too,” Peter says. “But I think that it’s just hitting me how absolutely knocked out I was, like, all the time. I was dragging myself around on a single thread of web just to, I dunno. Get to class. Remember to eat dinner. It was way rougher than I gave it credit for being.”</p><p> </p><p>“I bet,” Katie says. “Peter, you were driving yourself into the ground, running away from your—frankly bountiful amounts of trauma, so that you wouldn’t have to deal with it. Imagine how that all compounded.”</p><p> </p><p>“I don’t have to imagine it. I lived it,” Peter says.</p><p> </p><p>“And I’m assuming it feels amazing to be working through it all now?”</p><p> </p><p>Peter pauses for a moment. “Yeah,” he says. “It feels like I can walk again without falling right through the floor.”</p><p> </p><p>“Good,” Katie says emphatically. “A little shift in perspective and look at you. Hey. I’m proud of you. Like, for real,” Katie kicks him again, “you showed up and you listened and you talked and you tried to get better and it’s <em> working. </em> Dude!”</p><p> </p><p>Peter grins a little, his ears warm with blush. “Dude,” he echoes.</p><p> </p><p>“Badass,” says Katie with a grin. </p><p> </p><p>Peter tucks his head bashfully between his knees before peeking back up. “Thank you,” he says. “Thanks, really, it’s, like, all you. You’re a magician, a brain magician.”</p><p> </p><p>“Well, I’m not going to deny that,” Katie says, and Peter laughs out loud, burying his head deeper between his knees and wrapping his arms around his shins. “So, tell me more about your plans for these kids. What are you thinking, besides training and suits?”</p><p> </p><p>“Well,” Peter says, lifting his head to rest it on his kneecaps, facing Katie with his ear awkwardly smushed beneath his cheek. “I’m gonna talk to Tony, for sure. He’s the expert, considering he did it first. With varying degrees of, like, success, obviously, but I bet his advice will be good.”</p><p> </p><p>“Sure,” Katie agrees with a nod. “Anything he’ll have to add will be helpful, even if it’s <em> don’t take their suits.” </em></p><p> </p><p>Peter nods back, thoughtful. He wriggles his bare toes and runs his hands over his shins. “I think,” he starts. “I think my biggest priority is making sure they don’t, um, feel the same sort of responsibility I did. Like, the lives of everyone in all of New York don’t depend on them. Not really.”</p><p> </p><p>“That’s a good thing to convey,” Katie says softly. “And it’ll probably ring true, coming from you, since you did this already. Just like them. Same age and everything.”</p><p> </p><p>“Mhm,” Peter agrees. “I don’t want to train them to be little soldiers or whatever. I want them to be prepared to do, like, whatever it is they’re doing. I want them to be safe. But I don’t want them actually being Baby Avengers, y’know?”</p><p> </p><p>“They should be more worried about school and boyfriends or whatever it is they’re into,” Katie says, a smile tweaking her lips to the side. A light breeze huffs across the yard and some strands of her oil-slick hair go into her eyes. She wipes them away, still watching Peter. “You know,” Katie says, “you’ve got this look on your face and I can’t tell what it is, which is surprising me, because I thought I knew all your looks by now.”</p><p> </p><p>Peter smiles sadly. “I think it’s hope,” he says. </p><p> </p><p>Katie huffs at him. “Thank fucking G-d,” she says. “Finally. I’ve been waiting like hell for her to finally show up.”</p><p> </p><p>➴➵➶➴➵➶➴➵➶➴➵➶➴➵➶</p><p> </p><p>“I heard you talked to Katie about it all yesterday,” Tony says. They’re sitting on the back porch, right where he and Katie sit, and it feels weird and sort of poetic to bring Tony to this spot. Tony was his Katie, briefly, when he was younger, before the strange relationship they share started to melt around the edges and Tony and Peter both became far too comfortable around each other to take each other seriously except on special occasions: Arbor Day, National Pancake Day, and Yom Kippur. “Tasha says you were so excited she could hear you from in the living room.”</p><p> </p><p>Peter takes a sip of the beer in his hand, watching it weep condensation onto the wood banister he’s leaning upon. “Yeah, well,” he says. “This is only, like, the best opportunity in the world. I’m helping, just differently.”</p><p> </p><p>“And it’s helping in a way that’s better for you,” Tony says. “What a fucking miracle. You’re actually doing something that’s good for you.”</p><p> </p><p>“I was too tired,” Peter says. “Starting at fifteen and going non-stop every day is a lot, even with a brief five-year interlude.”</p><p> </p><p>“You burned out too young,” Tony agrees. “At least now you’ll be more careful of it, right? Take on a lighter course load, maybe?”</p><p> </p><p>“What? No way,” says Peter, “absolutely not, because then I wouldn’t be graduating with a Masters degree in the time it takes Johnny to finish his Bachelors and any other result is simply unacceptable. I need to lap him. I must be the superior source of intelligence in that apartment.”</p><p> </p><p>“Isn’t Johnny a himbo?” Tony says outright, sipping his beer.</p><p> </p><p>“He’s not a himbo!” Peter yelps. “Okay, he’s kind of a himbo. But he’s way more booksmart than he seems. He’s majoring in—”</p><p> </p><p>“Pyrotechnic theory?” says Tony. “Wait, wait. Arson? Flamethrowing. Twirling those on-fire baton things—? Hey, come back, okay, I’ll stop, yeesh, tough crowd.”</p><p> </p><p>“I like Johnny,” Peter says, tossing his head back and finishing his beer in one go. “He’s a nice guy so stop being an asshole about him or I’ll—” Peter tries to imagine what would annoy Tony most. “I’ll ignore you,” he decides, “and I’ll start telling people that Thor is my favorite Avenger again.”</p><p> </p><p>“You wouldn’t,” Tony gasps. “You would turn your back on your lifegiver just like that? The man who gifted unto you everything you have? Your financer and instigator?”</p><p> </p><p>“I know sometimes you forget this,” Peter says gently, taking Tony by the shoulders, “but you literally did not create me. We don’t share blood, or—none of our squishy stuff is related.” He shakes his head as Tony looks a little crushed. “Oy vey.”</p><p> </p><p>“You know I hate the squishy stuff. The squishy stuff doesn’t matter,” says Tony. “The only squishy stuff that matters is our <em> hearts—” </em></p><p> </p><p>“I’m going to punt you across the lawn.” </p><p> </p><p>➴➵➶➴➵➶➴➵➶➴➵➶➴➵➶</p><p> </p><p><b>Peter’s New </b> <b> <em>NEW</em> </b> <b> Daily To-Do, by Peter and Katie &lt;3 best fwends fowever &lt;3 </b> <b> <em>(Peter I literally hate you)</em> </b></p><ol>
<li>Wake up. I don’t really care how long you stay in bed as long as you get up in time for breakfast.</li>
<li>Work out for an hour, or whatever. You’re muscley enough as it is. (<strike>Wow, thanks, Katie, I’m flattered.</strike>)</li>
<li>Breakfast. I trust Bucky is feeding you well. (<strike>Soooo many pancakes.</strike>)</li>
<li>Free time. Keep up with the photos. They’re pretty great. <em>(I will not compliment you again so take that for what it was.)</em>
</li>
<li>Lunchtime, when you’re hungry. You’re getting a body-clock back, bro! Trust it!</li>
<li>Therapy from 2 pm - 3 pm OR nap. I know you nap like a cat.</li>
<li>Go destress from 3 pm until you calm down all the way. </li>
</ol><ol>
<ol>
<li>Again, I say nap.</li>
<li>Or snack.</li>
<li>Or whatever. Bother Sam.</li>
</ol>
</ol><ol>
<li>See if Barnes needs help making dinner. Again, trusting your body clock here.</li>
<li>Movies and free time until 10 pm. </li>
<li>Get in bed by 12 am. <em>(That’s right; you still have a bedtime. Deal with it.)</em>
</li>
</ol><p> </p><p>➴➵➶➴➵➶➴➵➶➴➵➶➴➵➶</p><p> </p><p>Peter is almost certain the only reason he does not uncontrollably weep and hold onto MJ’s pants to get her to stay with him longer is that he now has this <em> thing </em> he’s looking forward to, like, so much. He helps her pack and he still cries a little bit as he follows her out the door like a puppy watching their owner go off to work.</p><p> </p><p>“Pete, come on,” she says with that brand of fond frustration she saves just for him. “Let me put my shit in the car. You know I have to go.”</p><p> </p><p>“I know,” he whines. “I’m still sad, though.”</p><p> </p><p>“I’ll be back soon enough,” she says. </p><p> </p><p>“Yeah,” he says.</p><p> </p><p>“Hey,” she comes closer, just the two of them and her little Prius, grown dusty from sitting in the driveway the whole week long. “Hey,” she says again, her eyes goldish in the sunlight, reflecting back the silhouette of the leaves above them. Peter wants a picture of her just like this, looking down at him, her fingers brushing his bent elbows as he takes her waist between his palms. “You know I’d stay if I could, right?” she says.</p><p> </p><p>“Um, yeah,” Peter says. “Yeah, yeah, of course.”</p><p> </p><p>“You dumbass,” she says. “What the fuck. I love you, of course I’d stay, it’s just—”</p><p> </p><p>“Not the right time,” they finish together. </p><p> </p><p>“I know,” Peter says. He gives her a grin and a nod. “I know.”</p><p> </p><p>“Okay,” she says. She leans over and kisses him slowly. He’ll miss the taste of coconut chapstick on her lips. “I’ll, um,” she says, squinting her eyes closed and shaking her head as if to clear it, “I’ll call you when I’m home, okay? And I can probably come back for a weekend in a week or two. Just depends on my course load.”</p><p> </p><p>“Okay,” he says. “Whenever you can, um. That works, super cool. Really, really, um, good.”</p><p> </p><p>She brushes her thumb over his cheek. “Okay,” she says, and she pulls away. He puts her bag in the back seat and she clambers behind the wheel. Peter shoves his hands into his pockets and watches the car start. </p><p> </p><p>“Don’t forget to get gas,” he calls. </p><p> </p><p>She shoots him a thumbs up.</p><p> </p><p>He blows her a kiss.</p><p> </p><p>She pretends to catch it, press it to her cheek. She drives away.</p><p> </p><p>Peter walks back into the house and yells, “Next time she comes we better be so fucking functional, so functional, we’re gonna go to—museums, and wineries, and we’re gonna camp, fully outside, somewhere really nice.”</p><p> </p><p>Bucky peers over the back of the couch, looking rumpled and grumpy. “The fuck you shouting for,” he says. “S’nine in the morning.”</p><p> </p><p>“That’s wake up time,” says Peter. “That’s pancake time. Since when do you not have pancakes ready for pancake time?”</p><p> </p><p>“Jesus fuck, mercy me,” Bucky mumbles as he rises, knuckling his eyes one at a time. “A pain in my ass, you are. A pain in my senior citizen ass. You’d think you’d show some respect to your elders.”</p><p> </p><p>“I have no respect for my elders,” Peter says, “not when they don’t respect me back by feeding me.”</p><p> </p><p>Peter sets the table. Natasha comes crawling out of her room hunched and purple-eyed to make tea. Sam comes out last, looking very awake and groomed, and pours four glasses of orange juice. They sit down and they eat, settling back into their pre-MJ rhythm.</p><p> </p><p>“Stop bouncin’ yer knee,” Natasha says around a mouthful of pancake and jam. “I’ll cu’ i’ off.”</p><p> </p><p>“I’m edgy,” Peter says, and he sips at his tea. Natasha makes tea with so much lemon in it that it’s practically just—unsweetened lemonade, it’s gross, and yet they all drink it without a word.</p><p> </p><p>“No shit,” says Nat, after she swallows. “Why are you edgy?”</p><p> </p><p>“Dunno,” says Peter, though he knows.</p><p> </p><p>“We’ve still got half the summer to go before we can start anything,” she reminds him with a sharp kick to his leg under the table. “Slow down.”</p><p> </p><p>Peter buries his face in his arms and groans. </p><p> </p><p>➴➵➶➴➵➶➴➵➶➴➵➶➴➵➶</p><p> </p><p>The weeks find a new groove, post-breakdown, post-MJ, post-discovery. Peter is up and about more, hardly ever spending those loose hours stuffed under his bedsheets the way he had for the first weeks of all this. He fills notebook pages with plans for training and design concepts for armor once he hears more about them—a new Hawkeye, apparently, and some guy calling himself <em> The Asgardian, </em> which is monumentally stupid and Peter wants to tell him to change the name now while he still can. A Hulk kid, Hulk boy, something like that, and two badass Captains America, which makes Sam crow aloud. Another shrinky dink, who is Scott Lang’s <em> kid, </em> believe it or not. Among others. So Peter’s feeling good. He feels alive again, feels the blood in his veins begin to flow with emphasis, feels his heart beat with enthusiasm.</p><p> </p><p>And, because all of them are not only fickle, but a bunch of salt-and-vinegar assholes, Peter coming to life spurs Sam, Nat, and Bucky into spite-fueled self-improvement missions as well. </p><p> </p><p>Sam keeps running, and Peter thinks his muscles are back to where they were before Beck, if not bigger. He looks sexy. Peter thinks if Sam had his phone, his Instagram would be an absolute marshland of thirst-traps, lined with those bear-catching thingies from the cartoons that snap your ankle. There was a night Sam fell asleep on the couch looking like the silhouette of the Appalachian mountains and when Peter shook him awake, Sam said, groggy and weak, “Riley?” and Peter hadn’t known how to react other than to rub his two brain cells together and supply, “Um.” Sam had said, “Oh,” and then Peter spent his night on the couch with him, Sam’s head on his thigh, rubbing his shoulder until the crying stopped. Peter thinks it reinvigorated Sam, though. He looks certain all the time now. He still cleans dishes like they’ve cursed his mother, but. It’s not like that’s hurting him, so none of them say anything about it. It means they’ve always got clean cookery, anyway. </p><p> </p><p>Bucky has practically taken their record player hostage, bringing it with him when he sits on the porch, or when he goes to work out in the basement, or when he’s in the shower. He sings like a lark. It takes the resurgence of the music for Peter to realize it had been missing in the first place. The whole summer, not a peep. Peter hates Beck ferociously when he realizes, while he listens to Bucky sit on the deck and swing his legs and chirp <em> They Can’t Take That Away From Me </em> at the passing birds, at the bunnies and the deer and the mosquitoes that have been devouring them all tip to toe. He closes his eyes and sways as Bucky stirs a pasta carbonara on the stove and sings Chet Baker’s <em> I’m Old Fashioned. </em> Peter’d had to look up the title because he’d liked the melody so much. Or maybe he just likes Bucky so much. When Peter sees Bucky sit himself heavily on the piano bench with a look like Armageddon pulling the corners of his lips down, his one hand settling on the keys to plunk out messy scales, he nearly weeps. He is just thrilled to see Bucky coming back into himself, scrappy and charming and bearing affection in his veins like he’d been born to love them all and do nothing else.</p><p> </p><p>Natasha <em> eats </em> again. Peter has to nudge her at first—add an extra scoop to her plate, prod a cookie her way, hold her hand when she looks like she’s going to run into the bathroom and force it all back up—but she tries. Peter knows she tries, because he can see it in her eyes, the way grim determination wins out against the mortification of being seen taking care of her own body. She dances, starting slowly, not like before, and Peter goes with her. They both come to love it again—not in the punishing, sharp way they had when they were training, but for its soft arcs and languid lifts and the way they learn each other while dancing, every inch of their musculature familiar to the other. Peter knows exactly how her thigh sits in his palm, exactly how her back arches over his shoulder. And she knows what grooves of him make the best handholds, knows his left foot sometimes strains outward. They learn how to be easy together again. Peter learns when it’s okay to make a joke—<em>you’ll never be too heavy for me to lift, Nat, if that’s what you’re worried about—</em>and when to keep his mouth shut and let her talk. Or let her dance. Or let her cling to his hand with her tiny, rough one until she warms.</p><p> </p><p>Peter brings them to Buttermilk Falls, and they are stiff until they are not. They start to splash, and Bucky takes his shirt off to put his scarred shoulder on full display, and Natasha jumps on Sam’s back and nearly drowns him in the shallows. Peter fills up another roll of film easily, without even thinking about it, and they repeat his Walmart trip, but they all go inside, all four of them, and it feels terrible, Peter is lightheaded, and it feels <em> brilliant, </em> Peter is brave. They all are. They look over their shoulders surreptitiously the entire time, but there is nothing to be afraid of. He buys three rolls of film and develops his full one and his camera bounces on his still-damp t-shirt when they leave.</p><p> </p><p>Steve mails them all a design for the tattoos Nat promised they would get. <a href="https://i.pinimg.com/originals/bc/b4/93/bcb4933163970b27b543f440755489a4.jpg"> A </a> sun and crescent moon, the moon along the curve of the sun, rays wriggled, the two staring into each other’s eyes. Very modern and bohemian, and, beneath the figures, in simple font: <em> still I rise. </em> “Soon,” they promise to each other, when needles don’t seem like a death threat anymore; when it will feel like a mark of triumph instead of a fib claiming a completed mission. </p><p> </p><p>The next week, after the Farmer’s Market on Wednesday, they have themselves a picnic with their wine and their cheese and their bread and their berries on the side of a hill in the Buttermilk Falls State Park. It’s so green that it’s like falling into a crayon box, and the sky is so clear and blue Peter thinks he could sink into it, and the air is thick with humidity and bugs blitzing past and they spike their wine with super-vodka from a flask and drink themselves giggly before spending the entire afternoon laying flat on their backs and burning under the sun.</p><p> </p><p>Katie gives him a high five when he tells her. </p><p> </p><p>There are still imperfect moments. Terrible, aching moments when Peter goes three days without sleep before falling into the heavy, dark place where voices whisper between his ears. Days when the back of his neck prickles endlessly, for no reason, with no warning. Days he simmers, nerves and not much else. Days he naps on his bay window cushions and forgets to call May until his landline rings and rings and he grabs Kermit by the head and forgets he has to speak when he’s on the line. But they become fewer, with more good days between them. Days they feel bold enough to go to Plato’s Closet and dress Nat like a doll so Peter can take pictures of her posing in the grass, long-exposure, faded-colors, like something out of a photo album from the seventies. Days when Bucky makes them try his attempts at homemade gnocchi and they chew the balls of undercooked dough and compliment it because he’s standing there in the middle of the kitchen, shirtless with his apron covered in flour, and they love him. Days when Sam says they’re playing board games, and they do, until Natasha wrecks them at Monopoly so many times it becomes embarrassing. </p><p> </p><p>MJ comes back after three weeks in the city and spends a long weekend attached to Peter’s hip, to his general pleasure.</p><p> </p><p>He slings a web hammock between two tall trees in the backyard and they sit there, facing each other, gently rocking in the breeze, Peter with his arms cradling MJ’s shins, MJ sketching idly. </p><p> </p><p>“You’re really not worried about me running off and eloping with Johnny once we’ve moved in together?” Peter says. </p><p> </p><p>“Mm,” MJ says, erasing something. “I can share. He can have you Tuesdays. And bank holidays. But I get you the rest of the time.”</p><p> </p><p>“Wow,” Peter says. “That is so incredibly generous of you. The nicest shared custody agreement ever. Johnny is gonna shit his pants.”</p><p> </p><p>“He better,” says MJ. </p><p> </p><p>They rock some more. Peter leans his head back and closes his eyes, grinning into the sunshine. “I can’t wait to meet those kids,” he mumbles.</p><p> </p><p>He hears the scratch of MJ’s pencil stutter, then continue. “You really think about them a lot?”</p><p> </p><p>“Yeah,” Peter says. “I really do. The thought of, I dunno. Helping kids like that, taking care of them. Sounds really good. I could do that forever, I think.”</p><p> </p><p>“Hm,” MJ says. “You gonna want a lot of kids? ‘Cuz my hips are narrow, I don’t have—child-bearing hips.”</p><p> </p><p>Peter squints one eye open to peek at her. She pointedly isn’t looking at him. “I mean, in a perfect world?” he says. “In a perfect world, a whole brigade of kids. Enough to fill the whole house, corner to corner. Or, well, the whole apartment. Because I don’t think we’re really house people.”</p><p> </p><p>“Nah,” MJ agrees. “A whole brigade of them,” she repeats.</p><p> </p><p>“Or just one,” Peter says, and he shrugs. He <em> cannot </em> stop smiling. “One is fine, but a puppy, too, then. You’ll have to work with me there, Em.”</p><p> </p><p>“Fair enough request,” she says. “But I want it to be a Saint Bernard.”</p><p> </p><p><em> “Oh my G-d yes,” </em> Peter says, squeezing her legs tighter. “Perfect. Big puppy.”</p><p> </p><p>“The kind who’ll think it’s a lapdog forever, even when it’s, like, a bajillion pounds.”</p><p> </p><p>“Exactly.”</p><p> </p><p>“It’s gonna shed all over our nice couch.”</p><p> </p><p>“Is our couch nice?” </p><p> </p><p>“It’s the nicest thing in the whole apartment,” MJ says firmly. “Everything else, we went cheapie on. But our couch is, like, <em> super </em> nice.”</p><p> </p><p>“I can get down with that,” Peter says. He shakes his head in disbelief. He can get down with all of that, with anything at all, as long as MJ is still by his side.</p><p> </p><p>➴➵➶➴➵➶➴➵➶➴➵➶➴➵➶</p><p> </p><p>It’s Peter’s birthday. The early August humidity is out in full form, heavying the air until it’s almost unbreathable, but the sky is clear, cloudless blue and they’ve just completed an unofficial tour of the Finger Lakes in celebration. Next week, they’ll do the wineries, just the four of them, and they’ll probably make fools out of themselves, too, but it will be wonderful, Peter is certain.</p><p> </p><p>Tony and May come over. Peter is surprised, deeply. He saw them both the weekend before, when MJ was over, and now they’re here again and they’ve got armfuls of presents and Peter grabs all the bags and boxes and drops them on the ground so he can pull them both into his arms with gusto. “Guys,” he says wetly. “What the fuck.”</p><p> </p><p>“Our baby is twenty-one,” May says, ruffling his hair, “what did you think, we were just gonna miss it?”</p><p> </p><p>“I dunno!” he says, pulling them inside. He pats Tony’s cheek in disbelief. He can’t stop smiling and shaking his head.</p><p> </p><p>He turns towards the three waiting in the living room, sheepish smiles on their faces, dressed all nice and pretty. “You assholes,” he warbles, “you absolute pricks, I love you guys so much, what the fuck.”</p><p> </p><p>He hugs them all, one at a time, and files the feel of each hug in his brain. He has the space for it, now. Natasha, tight enough to hurt, all edges and force. Bucky, big and long enough for his one arm to wrap all the way around Peter’s shoulders, his hand squeezing in bursts. Sam, whose arms feel like just about the safest place in the world.</p><p> </p><p>“It was all Sam’s idea,” Bucky says fondly. </p><p> </p><p>“Sam,” Peter says, “the moth upon the lamp of my soul. Dude.”</p><p> </p><p>Sam messes up his hair. “Yeah, I know, I’m great. No worries. Go put on real people clothes and wash your face, we want pictures.”</p><p> </p><p>By the time Peter comes back out—wearing his hair in ungelled curls, a pair of cuffed jeans, and another short-sleeved button-up from MJ—they’re all absent from the living room. For a moment, he is a being of pure panic, until he sees the white paper taped to the wall, May’s curly script spelling out <em> follow me! </em> above an arrow. He follows, brows knit, and finds another identical note, and a third, leading him to the backyard, where a long wooden table has been set up with a tablecloth and steaming dishes, fairy lights wrapped around the tree branches, presents stacked on the porch. The entire image is something out of a fable, a picture book, and he finds himself crying again, a little helpless to it. </p><p> </p><p>“Guys,” he says, pressing the heels of his hands into his eyes. “What the heck.”</p><p> </p><p>May is there before he can look up, arms wrapped gently around Peter’s shoulders. She looks like a nymph like this, in her sundress and her blush in the low, lavender light of dusk. “It’s our special boy’s special day,” she says softly. “Of course we want it to be nice.”</p><p> </p><p>“This isn’t nice, this is—May,” he says. “This is—everything, gosh, this is just everything. Thank you so much.”</p><p> </p><p>Tony is grinning at him a little damply, leaning on the edge of the table. “Come eat before it gets cold, squirt,” he says.</p><p> </p><p>As they find their way to their chairs, Bucky raises his glass. “To mishpocheh,” he says. </p><p> </p><p>Peter’s eyes immediately sting. “Le chaim,” he says. He’s echoed, one at a time, around the table. </p><p> </p><p>They all sit, drinking local hard cider, the table messy and full, their elbows knocking, boisterous and bright even as the sun goes down and the fireflies come out, dancing around the table, landing on their arms. They talk non-stop, mouths full, and Peter catches Nat mouth <em> fuck a table manner </em> before taking a big bite of fresh bread. Peter loops his ankle around hers on his right and Tony’s on his left and feels overwhelmed by it all. So, so fucking happy he could burst with it. </p><p> </p><p>Bucky comes out with one of those cookie cake things, three layers of vanilla icing and Tollhouse-style chocolate chip with candles shoved haphazardly through the center, and they sing, and Peter turns bright red. </p><p> </p><p>He knows the wish he will make before it even forms on the back of his tongue. He thinks it fiercely, with all he has, and blows out the candles.</p><p> </p><p>He looks up at all of them around him and grins. Sheepish, and fond, and wet-eyed, and loved. “It’s for you all,” he says. “With all you do for me, how could it not be?”</p><p> </p><p>They find themselves on the porch, after. All six of them. A little drunk, made drowsy by the tune the crickets play behind them.</p><p> </p><p>Bucky and Peter find themselves the last two awake, hip to hip on the porch-swing. Bucky rocks them, with his heels planted on the wooden boards. He’s warm and a little molten against Peter’s side. Soft, eyes closed, jaw lax. </p><p> </p><p><em> Mishpocheh </em> has been playing in Peter’s brain since the second it left Bucky’s lips. </p><p> </p><p>“Bucky?” Peter says softly. </p><p> </p><p>Bucky nudges him with his knee.</p><p> </p><p>“Can I ask you something—um, sorta personal?”</p><p> </p><p>Bucky laughs breathily. “Sure, kid. You know I’ve got no problem telling you things.”</p><p> </p><p>Peter lets that settle into his chest before he asks, hardly more than a whisper, “Do you still pray?”</p><p> </p><p>A moment of silence as potent as an audible blink is Peter’s only hint to Bucky’s surprise. “Um,” he says. “Honestly, Pete, I was a shit Jew even before HYDRA. I never prayed that much. Just at temple, or when my ma was around. I observe the high holidays, and it’s—I mean, it runs through me, y’know? I’m Jewish. Culturally and all. But,” Bucky scratches his eyebrow. “I just. I don’t think I can accept the idea that there’s someone to pray to who would let all this shit happen to His people. You know? Not just me, but, like, ancient slavery. Antisemitism has been around forever. Why would He let His chosen people be beaten to a pulp, gassed to death?”</p><p> </p><p>Peter says, “I know what you mean.” Then, “I used to pray with my Uncle Ben, every night. But I haven’t been able to bring myself to since he died.”</p><p> </p><p>Bucky is quiet for a moment. “What about,” he says, stuntedly. “Let’s, if you want. Let’s say one, together, for him, on your twenty-first. For the two of you.”</p><p> </p><p>Peter is quiet for a moment. He reaches over and takes Bucky’s hand. </p><p> </p><p>He starts, the Hebrew clumsy on his tongue, the best one he can remember, their morning prayer, “<em>Modeh ani lefanekha melekh chai vekayam,” </em> and Bucky joins part way through, <em> “shehecḥezarta bi nishmahti b'cḥemlah, rabah emunatekha!” </em> They say it once more, together, all the way through.</p><p> </p><p>“Ben used to say the modeh ani every day when he woke up,” Peter says, after. “He used to tell me every day was a new life—a new beginning to be grateful for.”</p><p> </p><p>“A new life, hm?” Bucky says.</p><p> </p><p>Peter nods.</p><p> </p><p>Bucky squeezes Peter’s fingers. “Then there’s no time to say it like now, hm?”</p><p> </p><p>Peter turns towards him in the dark. They share a secret smile. “No time like now,” he repeats. They look out into the night around them and feel peace.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>mispocheh: family, but more like "extended family and then some"<br/>“Modeh ani lefanekha melekh chai vekayam, shehecḥezarta bi nishmahti b'cḥemlah, rabah emunatekha!”: I give thanks before you, King living and eternal, for You have returned within me my soul with compassion; abundant is Your faithfulness! </p><p>this specific translation is (sorry) from wikipedia, but when i checked it with other websites, it seemed pretty damn close! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modeh_Ani</p><p>ONE MORE CHAPTER MY LOVIES!! and it's just a lil epilogue -- the meat of the tale is wrapping up here!</p><p>gosh, thank you for sticking with this. i've had the time of my life spewing bullshit for you all. so much love to you. &lt;33</p><p>leave me a comment letting me know what you think, and read beedee's and my newest <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23955343">collab</a>, where peter, nat, and tony are the worst stake-out squad under the sun.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0010"><h2>10. epilogue (that sounds sad)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>“Can’t I give you an air conditioner as a moving-in present? Or buy you some new flooring? This wood is scratched. A new paint job, too, there’s water damage. A bigger fridge? You have a super metabolism, you can’t fit a whole chicken in that Igloo plastic monstrosity.”</p><p>“Tony,” Peter says, pressing his face into his palms and then gently screaming. </p><p>May returns from wherever she was neatening and wraps her arms soothingly around Peter from behind. “He just wants to keep you safe, baby, and he’s really stupid at figuring out how to do that.”</p><p>“He did such a good job earlier this summer though,” Peter whines. “How can you regress so hard, so fast. All at once. Complete regression. So regressive it’s almost impressive.”</p><p>“He’s a special case,” says May.</p><p>“I’m literally right here,” says Tony. </p><p>“Good. Take the hint,” says May.</p><p>Tony huffs and goes into the kitchen, running his fingers over the microwave with a look on his face that says <em>I’ll get to you later.</em></p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>i told u i might put it up today hfjklfh</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>When Peter and his honorary moving crew pull up outside his and Johnny’s brownstone, the fire guy himself is sitting outside on the stoop, his knees pointed towards each other and his hands cupping his jaw, looking melancholy and maudlin.</p><p> </p><p>They make electric, sudden eye contact through the windshield. Johnny’s expression flicks like a lightswitch and he leaps to his feet, squealing so loudly that Peter can’t help but laugh, his chin falling against his chest. He pulls the door open before the car is fully stopped and hops out.</p><p> </p><p>Johnny starts to sing. <em> “Almost paradise,” </em> he delivers it like a fucking power-ballad, arms straining forward as if he’s pulled by some magnetic force towards Peter, <em> “we’re knocking on heaven’s door.” </em> They half-dance toward each other, swinging arms, rolling hips, cut focus like a cheesy movie scene. Like when Maria and Tony meet eyes in the dance hall and everyone else blurs out. <em> “Almost paradise! How could we ask for more?” </em> </p><p> </p><p>Johnny tosses an invisible lasso out and reels Peter closer, faster. Peter plays along, hopping towards him like a fish on land. <em> “I swear that I can see forever in your eyes.” </em></p><p> </p><p>Peter joins in just as they bump together: <em> “Paradise!” </em></p><p> </p><p>Johnny’s arms are just as warm as always, his chest just as broad and hard, and he smells a little like birthday candles. Johnny sometimes accidentally lifts Peter clean off the ground with the excitement of his hugs, and this moment is no exception. Peter nuzzles unrepentantly into his neck and says, “My guy.” </p><p> </p><p>“Pete,” says Johnny, sounding strangled, and Peter pulls away in utter shock to meet Johnny’s teary eyes, “I missed you so much. A piece of my heart was missing all summer long. It was rough. We didn’t even get to share a cold one on Coney Island under the July sun.”</p><p> </p><p>“Johnny,” Peter says meekly, patting Johnny’s cheek. “Holy shit. I’m so honored. I missed you so much, like, way more than I thought I was gonna miss you. It turns out I love you, bro. Big bro love, I’m fuckin’ verklempt right now.”</p><p> </p><p>“Hey, asshole,” MJ yells, climbing out of the rented van, and Peter jumps in surprise. Sometimes, when he’s with Johnny, it feels like they’re the only two people in the whole entire city. </p><p> </p><p>“Michelle!” Johnny says. He’s not allowed to call her MJ. Peter still thinks it’s sort of funny. “How was your fancy schmancy Cali summer?”</p><p> </p><p>“Fine,” she says, coming to stand beside Peter. </p><p> </p><p>Johnny is taller than MJ, but the way she looks at him makes it seem like he’s not. Johnny seems to feel tiny around MJ, too, refraining from hunching over at the waist the way he does when talking to Peter so that they can meet eyes. Peter likes staring into Johnny’s eyes. They’re super blue and pretty. </p><p> </p><p>Huh. Peter suddenly thinks he has a good idea why MJ doesn’t like Johnny very much. </p><p> </p><p>May and Tony come out next, stretching and groaning, the car ride from upstate a little too long for their creaky old people bones. “Hey, Johnny,” says May, who likes Johnny. </p><p> </p><p>“You,” says Tony, who falls closer to the MJ side of the scale. </p><p> </p><p>Peter scoots closer to Johnny and wraps himself around his side protectively. “You’re all leaving as soon as my shit is inside. You’re so mean to my dude, my bro, my homeslice.”</p><p> </p><p>“Your baby angel darling light of your life,” Johnny says, patting Peter on top of his head. </p><p> </p><p>“Let’s not take it too far,” says Peter. </p><p> </p><p>“Let’s just unpack,” Tony says, nose wrinkled sourly. Sometimes Peter really does want to give him one good punch to set him straight. </p><p> </p><p>They all go to the trunk and take the duffle bags and cardboard boxes in hand. The sun is mid-August hot, and it simmers at the back of Peter’s neck as he peeks in his hastily-packed luggage to see what his family can manage versus what he and Johnny will need to shoulder. </p><p> </p><p>From under the weight of Peter’s chargers and camera supplies, Tony says, “Holy shit, kid, did you pack the whole of Best Buy in this box? Your apartment isn’t big enough to hold a scant half of this. I’ll make you new cords. Lighter cords. Retractable cords.”</p><p> </p><p>“Don’t whine,” says Peter, prodding Tony with a toe as he passes. </p><p> </p><p>May gets distracted as soon as they walk into the apartment, going off to make Peter’s bed, probably, or dust something. The small living room becomes too quickly populated with boxes and bags, a labyrinth between the doorway and the couch and into the mouth of the kitchen, all of them walking like idiots to get through it, lifting their knees near to their chests and hiking what they carry over their shoulders as not to kick it. The whole place has tall windows and light wooden floors which gives it the impression of being bigger than it is, but it is unmistakably small at its core. Two bedrooms, one bathroom, and a studio-style central living space denoted more by sheer force of will than by actual walls. It’s a good thing Johnny’s moved-in already, or there wouldn’t be enough room for all the boxes to sit around.</p><p> </p><p>“Wow, I hate it,” Tony says. “No, seriously, I don’t give a shit about Mister Flaming Hot Cheeto living in these conditions, but the thought of you not having enough air flow to fart without gassing yourself gives me agita.”</p><p> </p><p>“How many times do I have to tell you?” Peter says with a sigh. “I want to pay—”</p><p> </p><p>“For your own living space, yadda yadda,” Tony says, waving his hands. He scratches his brow and twists his face. “Can’t I give you an air conditioner as a moving-in present? Or buy you some new flooring? This wood is scratched. A new paint job, too, there’s water damage. A bigger fridge? You have a super metabolism, you can’t fit a whole chicken in that <em> Igloo </em> plastic monstrosity.”</p><p> </p><p>“Tony,” Peter says, pressing his face into his palms and then gently screaming. </p><p> </p><p>May returns from wherever she was neatening and wraps her arms soothingly around Peter from behind. “He just wants to keep you safe, baby, and he’s really stupid at figuring out how to do that.”</p><p> </p><p>“He did such a good job earlier this summer though,” Peter whines. “How can you regress so hard, so fast. All at once. Complete regression. So regressive it’s almost impressive.”</p><p> </p><p>“He’s a special case,” says May.</p><p> </p><p>“I’m literally right here,” says Tony. </p><p> </p><p>“Good. Take the hint,” says May.</p><p> </p><p>Tony huffs and goes into the kitchen, running his fingers over the microwave with a look on his face that says <em> I’ll get to you later. </em></p><p> </p><p>Peter says, “Hey, I love you guys, but I can finish unpacking, alone, with Johnny, it’s really okay, you—MJ, stop disinfecting the doorknobs, seriously, Tony I see that screwdriver in your hand, put it—oy vey.”</p><p> </p><p>MJ throws the damp paper towel at him. “What if he didn’t wash his hands after Johnny Time and then touched the knobs? Hm?”</p><p> </p><p>“You talk about him like he’s a wild animal,” Peter grumbles. Frustrated, but overwhelmed more than anything: another move, another bandaid ripped off, leaving everything he was used to. Standing on the edge of a building before jumping the first time, unsure whether his homemade webbing would hold. “Get out, leave us alone so we can have our honeymoon phase in peace.”</p><p> </p><p>“Honeymoon phase?” MJ questions.</p><p> </p><p>Johnny clambers over the bag-and-box maze to sling an arm over Peter’s shoulders. “Beer and nostalgic childhood movies, baby! <em> The Parent Trap, Clueless—” </em></p><p> </p><p><em> “Scooby Doo! and the Reluctant Werewolf,” </em> Peter adds. </p><p> </p><p>MJ pinches the bridge of her nose between her fingers, but when she looks up again, she has a small smile on her face, as if this, somehow, has helped her understand. </p><p> </p><p>Peter realizes they probably feel as nervous leaving him as he feels for them to leave. That sobers him, fierce and fast.</p><p> </p><p>“Okay,” MJ says, and shrugs. “C’mon, May, Tony, let’s leave them alone. We can try to stop him growing up all we want, but it’ll never work.”</p><p> </p><p>“Hey,” Peter says. “I actually don’t know why that offended me, but it did.”</p><p> </p><p>MJ laughs aloud. Peter wriggles out of Johnny’s embrace to rush forward and give her the tightest hug he can manage. “I’ll see you in a few days, Em,” he says, pressing two quick kisses to her lips. “Whenever you get a minute, stop by, okay?”</p><p> </p><p>“Mm. You know I will,” she says. </p><p> </p><p>May replaces MJ, grinning and shining with pride. “I love you,” she says, pulling Peter in. She rubs their noses together and he blushes, content but a little sad to be leaving her again. “Be safe,” she says, first staring at Peter and then Johnny.</p><p> </p><p>Peter shoots a look over his shoulder just in time to see Johnny flash a flaming thumbs up to May, who rolls her eyes fondly. A kiss on Peter’s cheek, and then Tony is there, all grey beard and roundish glasses and pursed lips. </p><p> </p><p>“I don’t actually despise him as much as I make it seem like I do,” he says gruffly with a sniff, which is about as close to an apology as Johnny will ever get. </p><p> </p><p>“Aw, sweet,” Johnny chirps.</p><p> </p><p>“Shh, the adult is talking,” says Tony. Peter rolls his eyes, far too familiar with that line by this point of his life. </p><p> </p><p>Tony sniffs again, and Peter feels suddenly, terribly affectionate. He pulls Tony into a tight hug that is immediately reciprocated, bunching Tony’s shirt in his hands like he’s a kid again. </p><p> </p><p>“I’ll miss you too,” Peter says.</p><p> </p><p>“I didn’t even—?”</p><p> </p><p>“You were thinking it so loud I heard it,” Peter says, nuzzling into Tony’s neck. </p><p> </p><p>“Well,” Tony says. “I will. Miss you. Even though I’ll see you, like, every weekend. Or whenever you want to come over. Which can be very often, quite often, a lot, if you’d like. Or not. Whatever works.”</p><p> </p><p>“Whatever works,” Peter agrees, patting Tony’s back with a sniffle. </p><p> </p><p>Tony presses his nose into the spot above Peter’s ear and whispers, just for them, “Hey, I’m proud of you. I’m just—Peter, I’m so disgustingly proud of you, it’s nauseating, I’m sick to my stomach. You’re brilliant and bright and you’re doing so well, and I just. I love you. Okay? Take care of yourself.”</p><p> </p><p>“I will,” Peter says, blinking. “I love you too.” He pulls away, and sees everyone is pointedly looking away from them, for which he is grateful. “Drive safe, okay?” Peter wipes under his eyes. “If you get into an accident with May and MJ in the car, I’ll have to kill you.”</p><p> </p><p>Tony winks as Mays says, “No worries, kiddo, I’d beat you to it.” </p><p> </p><p>He and Johnny walk them all outside. The sky is pink and low with light, the sidewalks sherbet-stained. They drive off, towards Manhattan, leaving only a cloud of exhaust and the radio spitting the last straining notes of <em> Rhiannon </em> in their wake. </p><p> </p><p>Peter looks over at Johnny and feels himself grin. “Dude,” he says.</p><p> </p><p>Johnny socks him on the shoulder, then takes him by the elbows, and they sort of jump a little, grinning and basking. “We’re adults! We’re living alone!” Johnny crows. “We can piss with the door open and leave beer bottles by the sink overnight!”</p><p> </p><p>“We don’t have to sneak inside anymore because we both know each other’s identities,” Peter says.</p><p> </p><p>“And now I can stitch up your grievous wounds for you! No more experimental doctor Parker!” </p><p> </p><p>“Wow,” Peter says, and they just sorta smile at each other. “This is the start of a whole new life, huh?”</p><p> </p><p>“You and me, pal,” Johnny agrees, slinging an arm around Peter and leading them back inside. “This is our year. Grab it by the tits and take it. But, like, consensually.”</p><p> </p><p>➴➵➶➴➵➶➴➵➶➴➵➶➴➵➶</p><p> </p><p>“You look like my old neighborhood yente,” Bucky says joyfully from his corner of the booth when Natasha finally slides her way in, frizzy hair tucked under a silk scarf, completing the sun-stained, mid-morning quartet. </p><p> </p><p>“The squad is all here,” Peter says, leaning over to peck her cheek and squeeze her shoulder. “Do we have a name for our squad? I mean, like, sure, Varsity Avengers, but not really any more, right?”</p><p> </p><p>“Yeah, ‘cuz we’re definitely still in our fuckin’ prime,” says Bucky, waving his stump. </p><p> </p><p>“I’ve never felt better,” says Sam. “Never looked better, never been in better shape. I have accomplished so much recently it’s astounding, even to me.”</p><p> </p><p>“I’m drunk,” says Nat.</p><p> </p><p>“The Sarcasm Squad,” Peter says. “That’s what we are.”</p><p> </p><p>“Hmm,” says Sam. “We meet for weekly brunch and spike our mimosas and gossip until the management kicks us out on a noise complaint.”</p><p> </p><p>“Our avoidance tactics are brilliant,” says Bucky. </p><p> </p><p>“No, really, I’m already drunk,” says Natasha.</p><p> </p><p>Peter leans back in his seat, wiggling his toes in his Birkenstock sandals. He stares at the three of them, soft-cheeked and bright-eyed and so, so important to him, and thinks, well damn. If one good thing could’ve come from all they’ve gone through, <em> geloybt gat </em> it’s this.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>i cannot believe this is finished!!!! i know overall this work is short, but i never really write anything with as many chapters as this so it felt like a foray into a new world!!!! fun, right?? gosh thank you all for reading, i truly hope you enjoyed -- let me know how you feel now that it's all done! let me know your favorite bits, let me know if you hated it, a comment is a comment frankly!! if you have a prompt, comment it or send it to me as a message on tumblr, linked below!</p><p>make sure to subscribe if you actually enjoy my writing bc my semester ends this week and i have Plans!! for new fics!! whoop whoOP motherfuckers! </p><p>find me on the <a href="https://floweryfran.tumblr.com/">tumblr</a><br/>or the <a href="https://twitter.com/flowery_fran">twitter</a></p><p>i love you all dearly!!</p>
        </blockquote><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>just a short lil prologue for you -- the rest of the chappies are longer, whether that makes u happy or sad is to be seen. chapter 2 will probably be up next friday, and so on. there will be 10 chapters, and the last will be a short epilogue. i hope you all stick around. things will be terrible and then not terrible! whump, yes, but lots of comfort eventually! yay!</p><p>i literally wrote this entire thing because i had the phrase "sarcasm squad gets a summer home" stuck in my head and knew it had to be these four. </p><p>i love you all. leave me some comments bc i swear they'll help me write faster, and if i write faster then i can say "fuck the schedule!" and start uploading even sooner than intended. &lt;333</p></blockquote></div></div>
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